


The Broken Spindle

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Supernatural
Genre: And Dean helps, Crossover, Demonic Possession, Gen, Kidnapping, Reid and Emily kicking arse, Reid's not allowed to drive the impala, Saving People Hunting Things, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-07-14 10:39:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 46,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7167782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven demonic sisters walk the Earth again, searching for the seven vessels that will allow them to reclaim their true power. That's no problem. Dean's faced worse, this is just another Wednesday to him. Piece of cake, except for the fact that the damn feds walked right into the demons' trap and now there's a bunch of possessed government agents on their asses. The only thing preventing the sisters regaining their powers is one Spencer Reid. </p><p>Dean's going to have to put a one-dork limit on his car soon, because he's almost ready to hand the man back over himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ex. 7:14-24

**Author's Note:**

> **Thank you to my beta, Tafferling, for all her help with this piece.**

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be **changed** into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink and the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 7:17–18_

The hunters were tenacious little fucks. It had been a long time since she and her sisters had been hunted with such fury. Since they had been hunted at _all_ , rather. Isska was finding that it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

“This world has degraded,” Gaddy complained. She kicked at the mould-covered wood of the dilapidated barn they were cowering in like frightened sheep with the wolf at the door. At her touch, the wood groaned and splintered into ash. “The last time we were here, it was much more… welcoming.”

“Well, who do we have to blame for that?” Sergė spat, looking up from where she carved strips of dripping meat from a still twitching pig. “If it wasn’t for you, this would still be our world and we wouldn’t be stuck in these… _vessels._ ”

Like they could hardly even be called vessels. Her sisters all looked ridiculous. _Isska_ looked ridiculous. Forced to inhabit the first vessels they could find, they were a motley collection of all the shapes and sizes a human could take, and all falling to pieces.

Gaddy in a boy-child body with a scabby lip and tattered pants made of a stiff blue material that she picked at uncomfortably.

Sergė in a woman, barely grown, skinny as spit and with wide brown doe-eyes that Isska had no doubt were the reason the vain bitch had even chosen it.

Verpi, the smartest and oldest, in a man twice as broad as the rest who hid her fragility behind a bushy beard and cold dark eyes.

Audeja and Metan in a husband and wife, captured together and now sitting close on a wooden beam and saying little. Conspiring against the rest of them, no doubt.

Nukirpeja was an elderly man. Isska thought of scoffing at her choice of vessel as well, but there was a canny sharpness to the body that made her think again. It was a pity that that one was melting twice as fast as the rest of them. It could have been useful.

And hers. Her stupid vessel. Stronger, physically, than the rest at least. It wasn’t degrading anywhere near as quickly as the others, allowing her to take her time finding another, something the others didn’t have the benefit of. Knowing the body was easy, as easy as inhabiting it had been. Male. Late twenties, educated, married, a _father_. Had been a father. She smiled, feeling the face curve at her desire. Not a father anymore.

Now, just transport.

“Others hunt us,” Nukirpeja said suddenly, raising her head and staring at the door of the barn. Outside, a storm raged, barely covering their tracks. “I think they’ve discovered the mess you made of your vessel’s family, Metan.”

“I was hungry,” Metan whined, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “We’re _all_ hungry. Why are we running? We should take what we need. Like any of these pathetic humans with their _iron_ can stop us.”

Isska ignored them, slinking through the barn and leaving her quietly bickering sisters to self-destruct. Idiots, the lot of them. She was sick of picking up after them. Sick of cleansing the messes they made. But she’d keep doing it, because that was what family did.

A section of the wall flapped loose, and she pressed herself down, peering through out into the blustery night. Trees whipped around wildly, casting looming shadows on the ground, the rain threatening but failing to fall quite yet

“Hunters?” said a high voice behind her. She didn’t even need to turn her head to know it was Gaddy. “The two that track us? The men?”

Isska narrowed her eyes. The moon did little to illuminate the world, but it did enough. Heavy cars pulled up with their lights off and people slipped out of them. People in dark clothes, weapons held confidentially, moving as a pack. More than the hunters. She counted, and smiled. Once again, she would deliver salvation to her family while they argued mindlessly. She would deliver their salvation to them on a silver platter. They needed vessels that were as connected as they were for their powers to return, for them to be more than cut-rate demon scum. And here, moving around the barn in a tight group that communicated wordlessly, six fresh vessels. Six fresh _strong_ vessels. Only six, but she was sure she’d find another soon enough. Maybe one of them had a child. Or a lover.

Once her sisters owned them, they would see.

“Let Verpi ride the leader,” she instructed Gaddy as the moon caught the face of the one the others obviously followed; a man with dark hair and a fiercely focused expression. “Fight amongst the rest as you please. _Do not_ kill any of them. We need to be joined for our strength to return, and I can hardly think of a family more joined than those who hunt together.”

“Delicious,” Gaddy said, grinning. There were gaps in the smile where the vessel had lost teeth. Disgusting creature. “Shall we?”

Isska grabbed her. Her sister laughed once in her silly boy-child voice, and then screamed. The people moved towards them swiftly, summoned by the sound of one of their young in distress, heedless of their fate. Heedless of their importance.

They’d know soon enough.

 

* * *

 

“Fan-fucking-tastic the feds beat us here.” Dean slammed his hand against the dash angrily, wincing at the hollow sound. _Sorry, Baby,_ he thought guiltily. _You did your best._

“What do we do?” Sam asked, his hand on the handle and eyes locked on the hulking shapes of the empty SUVs up ahead. “We can’t just let them walk in there. They have no idea what they’re up against, Dean.”

Yeah, good old bleeding heart Sammy. Of course he was worried about the G-men in this shit-fest of a situation. Seven new demons, seven _old as balls_ demons, on the loose, and Dean ten steps behind them. They’d already carved a path of destruction through Georgia that was going to be drawing all eyes to them. A bunch of dead feds would only add to that.

“Come on,” he instructed his brother, reaching back for his shotgun on the backseat. “Bring your knife. Let’s go gank some demon scum before they make messes of our badge-wielding buddies.”

Of course, things didn’t go as smoothly as Dean had expected.

He should really stop expecting smoothness.

They rounded the barn and found themselves face to face with a man that Dean would have bet his best bottle of scotch on _no fucking way is this dweeb a fed_.

“FBI, drop your weapons,” the man said coolly, raising his piece. Dean took a single moment to admire the sweet revolver the guy was wielding. _Nice_. The ridiculous fed’s partner, a dude with a glare that screamed _governmentally employed tight-ass_ , stepped around to cover his back.

“Okay, we’re not who you’re after,” Sam said, holding his hands out in an attempt to look innocent, right as a little boy popped out from a broken hole in the side of the barn and giggled. All of them looked at him. Dean raised his gun.

“Verdi was supposed to have you,” the boy said happily to the actual-fed, whose face didn’t even fucking twitch. _Stone cold man, whoa._ “But I don’t like sharing.”

And that’s when it all went to shit.


	2. Ex. 7:25-8:15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This is what the great LORD says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you **refuse** to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 8:1–4_

One thing Morgan loved about being partnered with Emily was her calm acceptance of his lead. He knew she was capable as hell. Heck, sometimes she was probably more capable than he was—and when those times came, she wasn’t shy about telling him. So when she did follow him, steady as a rock and covering his back, he didn’t falter because he had absolute confidence that he was doing the right thing.

Now was one of those times. The case was godawful, and the weather was crippling them, but he couldn’t help but feel _ready_ as they stepped out of their cars and silently paired off to take the barn. Good thing about the storm rolling around them: there was no way anyone in the dilapidated building had any idea that they were approaching, not when they’d ghosted up to the farm with lights off and the crunch of tires muffled by shrieking winds and thrashing trees. It made it a _whole_ lot creepier though.

Glancing back, Emily’s calm gaze met his. She nodded and jerked her head to the side entrance. Reid and Hotch peeled off together to take the other side, JJ and Rossi nodding at each other as they took position ready to slip through the wide double doors. Theirs was the most dangerous entry. Hotch had frowned as they’d taken it, his eyes flickering from JJ to Reid as he calculated which of them he’d rather have taken point, but he trusted Rossi. Morgan trusted Rossi. Morgan trusted _JJ_. They’d be fine.

And they had to end this now. There were too many bodies, too much violence without any discernible cause. Morgan didn’t like seemingly random violence. These deaths, this trail of dead families and executions for no reason other than the fact that they’d likely just been in the damn wrong place… they scared the shit outta him like nothing else. Even Reid, the walking encyclopaedia of the human mind, had been stumped and unsettled by the erratic nature of this case.

Emily waited, gun ready, watching him. Waiting for him to move in first. Good. She’d kick his ass if she knew he was feeling protective but, god knows, the last thing he wanted to be doing today was calling Garcia to let them know one of them was coming home with more holes in them than they’d left with. Woman could be _scary_ when mad. He counted down with his fingers, barely visible in the wavering light of Emily’s flashlight. _Three… two… one_.

The door opened smoothly, silently, into a cavernous space. They fanned out. Morgan’s eyes scanned, taking in their surroundings, his senses alert and nerves wired. Farm implements. Blind spot over there—Emily already moving towards it. Shifting his attention from his partner’s back to the slit of light that had appeared across the empty space of the barn where JJ and Rossi were entering. Flashlights lit up moulded beams, rotten hay, forgotten tools, the still-bleeding corpse of a pig.

Morgan paused on the pig. _Urgh._ Poor thing. What kind of sicko did that to an animal?

The pig twitched.

_Alive._

_Fuck._

Morgan swallowed, looked for Emily once more, and heard it. The scuff of a limb being pulled away quickly across a dirt-strewn floor. He spun. His flashlight illuminated a woman on her knees. Tucked in a stall, dirty blonde hair cascaded over her face. She was crying.

“FBI, get down,” he ordered, keeping the light on her and moving forward cautiously. He could hear someone behind him. A quick look to the side confirmed that whoever it was, they wore an FBI vest. “Come on. I can’t help you unless I can see your hands.”

White, shaking hands splayed across the floor in front of her. She was unarmed. When she looked up at him, her eyes glittered with tears and fear, darting around. Looking for someone. He swore, crouching with his gun held carefully at an angle she couldn’t grab it but at hand in case he needed it. “I’ve got someone over here,” he called, right as the woman’s hand snapped up to grab his wrist. “Whoa, hey, lady—”

“They’re inside me,” she whispered, and then convulsed horribly. Something streamed out of her, black and thick and fast-moving, swallowing him. Choking him. He tried to call out and couldn’t. Tried to stand and fell. Dropped his gun. The black faded with his consciousness. _Pick up your gun,_ he thought groggily, finding himself on the straw-strewn floor with no memory of having fallen. The woman lay next to him, not moving, not breathing. He didn’t move to help her. Why not?

_Derek, get your gun. Help her._

He stood. Picked up his gun. Turned _away_ from the woman. Emily appeared, eyes darting from him to the woman. “Is she okay?” she asked, and stepped forward.

He raised the gun. _What?_

He aimed it at Emily. _Stop. Derek. What the fuck are you doing?_

And he smiled.

 

* * *

 

It was a child. A male child, between seven and nine years old, Caucasian. Red hair and both his lateral and central incisor missing. Reid saw him smile at Hotch, felt Hotch moving past him to get between the kid and the two armed suspects.

He didn’t see what happened next. He heard the child speak— _“Verdi was supposed to have you, but I don’t like sharing” —_ and then he heard Hotch make a short, hoarse choking sound, and fall. He turned, his gun still on the suspects, and Hotch was on his knees staring at his Glock. The suspects went to shout something, say something, but Reid was focused on his boss, on the groggy, slightly hazy expression on his face, trying desperately to work out _where_ he was hit. Was he hit? He had to be. Hotch didn’t just _fall_.

“Oh shit, oh shit, hey dude—run!” one of the suspects was calling, backing up.

Reid spun on his heel, aimed, and barked at him to stop, to _get on your knees!_ “Hotch,” he called back, reaching back for his cuffs and moving forward. There were two suspects. One of him. They still had their guns. The taller of the two looked uncertain, his eyes darting from Reid to Hotch, but the shorter one still had his Colt aimed unerringly past Reid to his colleague. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Hotch said, his voice odd, and Reid could hear him getting to his feet. The child? Where was the child?

“He’s not fine,” the shorter man said, twitching the muzzle of the gun as though to tell Reid to turn around. “Come on, man, you saw that, he’s not fine. Get away from him!”

Hotch chuckled.

He… _what?_

“Take the shot, Agent Reid,” he said as calmly as if he was delivering a profile or telling Reid to grab a coffee instead of shoot a suspect who, even Reid could tell, probably wasn’t the guy they were here for. Neither had shown any inclination to pull the trigger, and both were exhibiting considerable fear arousal responses by the events. No one who’d done to their victims what the people they were hunting had done would feel fear from two feds. “Shoot them. Do it now. That’s an order.”

Reid met the gaze of the taller man. “He’s not okay,” the man said slowly. “Turn around, Agent. Back up towards us. We’ll help you.”

For a single, heart-stopping moment, the farmyard lit up by a shuddering flicker of lightning. Reid turned as the whistle-boom of thunder followed, thudding along with his pulse and heartbeat. He turned, and found Hotch three steps behind him with his gun in hand. Aimed at him. Reid stared down the barrel and calculated the velocity. It wasn’t a hard calculation. Hotch wouldn’t miss. Not at this range.

The bullet would pass easily straight through Reid’s glabella, between the superciliary ridges, ricocheting through his brain matter until it hammered out from his parietal bone with explosive force. Staring down the gun barrel, he didn’t believe Hotch would pull the trigger. Not for a second. But his mouth went dry anyway, his body immediately chilling, his breathing shuddering once and evening out, as the flight or fight fear response kicked in and his nervous system redirected every iota of his being towards surviving.

He might not die. Head wounds were strange like that.

“Hotch,” he croaked, and to his shame, took a step back. It was a hard step, wanting to step forward and take the gun from his friend who must be hurt somehow, confused by something, but his mind pushed him back. And another step, easier this time. The next two were stumbling, almost running. Running from _Hotch_. “Aaron. What are you doing?”

Hotch laughed again. In the dark of the rainless storm, his eyes were black pools. Black enough that Reid couldn’t see any white, turning them into vacant holes on his familiar face. His expression twisted, cruel, there was something almost like pleasure on his features as he stroked the trigger.

And Reid made his choice.

 _“Don’t touch the trigger unless you’re committed to taking a life,”_ the memory of Hotch murmured in his mind, all those years ago, when he’d tried to coach Reid into firing a gun to save his life. As soon as the Hotch in front of him tenderly flicked his finger down the trigger, Reid turned. Reid ran. Straight towards the two strangers. They turned with him, diving for the dubious safety of a broken fence.

Most of Reid still hadn’t processed what was going on, purely running on adrenaline at this point. Looking into the black hole of a gun’s muzzle would do that. He was purely running on adrenaline, so he didn’t immediately connect the _crack_ that sounded out behind him, although his ears ached with it. Didn’t immediately connect that with the fist that punched into his back, his right shoulder, where the vest ended and his— _what bone is that? Do you remember? Higher cognitive functions are shut down by the body in times of_ —arm jerked forward, weirdly, involuntarily, gun flying from suddenly numb fingers. _What?_

_Why?_

The pain was distant. Suddenly on his knees, staring at the blood tracing down his arm and staining his grey shirt brown. Lots of it. What joint was that?

Ow.

“Get up! Shit, Sam! Watch out!”

Someone grabbed him, threw him onto the ground. Came down on top of him. He landed on his arm, his shoulder. Another _crack_. The fence above their heads splintered.

The pain kicked in then, white-hot and pulsing, and Reid had forgotten how much being shot _hurt_. Suspect. There was a suspect holding him. He looked at his gun and willed his hand to reach for it. It didn’t, just lay limp and odd like it wasn’t a part of him anymore.

_You’re going into shock._

_Get up._

_Assailant is still armed. Still coming. Behind you._

“What are you doing!?” someone unfamiliar shouted, and Reid let himself be dragged to his feet, the man who’d saved his life aiming his weapon, at Hotch. Help. He should radio for help. “Don’t kill him! We need them all!”

“Isska—grab them!”

The man aimed. Reid knocked his arm down with his left hand. “Don’t shoot him,” he said, imagining Hotch bleeding, Hotch shot, and the man glared at him. Pain pulsed. When Reid glanced down, there was red on his arm, his pants, the gravel below. The auxiliary vein. That was in the shoulder.

“Then run, idiot!” the man screamed at him, so Reid obeyed, staggering in the direction he was pushed. Away from Hotch and the strangers now with him. Towards the shorter man who fired twice, past him, eyes grim. There was a hand keeping a steady pressure on his back. Keeping him moving. Forward. Until he wasn’t running forward, but falling, the ground spinning with him.

“Sam!” someone yelled.

Reid fumbled for his earpiece. “Agent down,” he murmured, thinking of Hotch and his own shoulder and the blood, but mostly Hotch. The earpiece crackled. He thought he heard Emily’s voice. _Hotch is down, something is wrong with Hotch—someone help him. Assistance required._

_Assistance requested._

_Please._

 

* * *

 

Emily walked into the stall, and Morgan shoved a gun in her face. While smiling.

What. The. Fuck.

She did the only thing she could, in the circumstances.

She’d feel guilty later about _how_ hard she’d taken him down, but Jesus shit fucking Christ, the man had shoved a _gun_ into her face. Finger on the trigger. In all honesty, she should have hit him again.

He went down hard. That should have been her second clue that something had gone seriously, seriously wrong, because they were all taught how to do two things well in the academy: take people out and be taken out. They knew how to fall. They knew how to handle a fucking gun. But Morgan went down hard, his arm twisting grossly under his weight as she pinned him textbook-style. The gun was still in his hand with his finger on the trigger, like he’d learned how to handle the thing watching action reruns on Fox.

“The hell, Morgan?” she snapped, loosening her knee slightly because he was wheezing under her. “What are you playing at?”

“In here!” he hollered, and feet ran towards them.

Things happened really quickly after that.

JJ screamed. It was a short, shocked scream. At almost the same time, gunfire echoed from outside. Where Hotch and Reid were.

“Dave!” JJ cried out, and the cry was cut short. Like she’d been struck. Another gunshot.

Emily made her choice. This was _crazy_. As soon as she released the pressure on Morgan, he snarled and lunged at her, his fingers closing around her arm and gripping tight enough that she felt the bones in her wrist grind slowly together. She kicked him in the face, turned, and ran towards JJ’s scream. She found JJ on the ground with an old man crouched over her, his mouth open and eyes a roiling black. Rossi watched, face blank and almost bored, itching at his temple with the barrel of his weapon.

“FBI!” roared Emily, and they both turned towards her. She shot the old man in the chest without breaking stride, using her momentum to bring her shoulder up and into Rossi’s sternum, against the vest. He grunted, stunned, stumbling back.  

“Get up!” she shrieked at JJ, grabbing her friend and practically dragging her on her ass until she staggered upright, Morgan running towards them with his face inhumanly determined. JJ looked dazed, wobbly, blood trickling from a blow on her head, but she followed. Emily bolted for the exit, dragging JJ behind her like a kite. “We have agents down,” she hollered into her earpiece as they burst out into the wild night. Pushing JJ forward, she spun, shoving the door closed and slamming the bolt home, feeling it shudder as Morgan smashed into it from the other side. “This is Agent Prentiss of the FBI—we are taking fire; we have agents down.”

“Spence!” screamed JJ. Emily turned just in time to see Hotch shoot Reid in the back. They watched him stumble, straighten, keep running. They watched him realize.

They saw him sink to the ground.

And then their view of him was cut off as Morgan and Rossi appeared, weapons out. Wearing the faces of strangers as they raced towards them. Their eyes were black. Emily saw that clearly. Completely and utterly black.

There was no choice. Emily turned her back on them, grabbing JJ’s arm. “Keep running,” she ordered her, and they bolted into the woods.

They were hunted.

 

* * *

 

He shot Reid in the back.

No. Not him. He’d never do that. But, he _did_. A stranger in his own body, doing things without thought, moving without him, making choices that weren’t his own. It laughed without him, the noise high and cruel. He saw fear spark in Reid’s eyes. Fear he’d never seen before.

Reid was scared of him.

But he wasn’t completely a stranger in his body. He had felt the cool surface of his Glock in his hand. He had felt the adrenaline thundering through his veins. Felt the savage glee of whatever drove him as Reid had taken a frightened step away from the barrel that had hovered without flinching directly between his eyes.

 _I should be horrified_ , Hotch had thought, but he hadn’t been.

He’d been excited.

 _Why am I doing this,_ he’d thought again, and Reid had kept backing away.

Turned.

Ran.

_Oh god no, don’t, don’t do this. Please stop._

Aaron Hotchner had never shot a man in the back. Never.

Today, he aimed his weapon, laughed again, and slammed a bullet home into his agent’s shoulder-blade, right where he knew the vest would offer no protection. It was an easy shot, so easy. He almost wished it was harder. He even let Reid get a little bit further away, a little bit closer to safety. So it would hurt more when he realized. An extra challenge.

Reid staggered _no no no oh god Reid no I’m so sorry don’t fall keep running_ and straightened. He kept moving, almost safe, and Hotch _don’t stop_ followed at a sedate pace because he was a predator and predators always knew when the shot was true. And this shot was true. And when Reid stumbled again as the realization hit him, and his knees hit the gravel, Hotch laughed and laughed and laughed because this was _living_ , finally!

_Spencer get up. Don’t fall. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this!_

He aimed the gun again. He wasn’t going to _kill_ him, honest. His sisters would hate that. Just… make him squirm a little. Splash some more pretty patterns of red on the ground around him. Hazel eyes, hazy with pain and shock, met his. Hotch stared at them unblinkingly, and never, ever forgot the look of them, the pupils blown with fear. Pleading. Almost pleading. Like a dog.

Maybe in the knee this time. He’d make Reid drag himself away.

_Stop. What are you doing? Stop!_

Another twitch of his finger, another bullet aimed at his _friend_ target. The kickback from the gun jarred his arm and he swore, the shot flying wide. It would have missed anyway. The hunter, that fucking hunter, knocked the skinny agent down. Then dragged him up, trying to tug him away. Bitch. There was a gun aimed at him now and, unlike the agent, this man didn’t cringe. A hunter through and through. Hotch bared his teeth at the man, daring him to do it. _Do it. Please. Don’t let me hurt them anymore. Please stop me._

The skinny agent knocked the hunter’s arm away. How pathetic. He’d shot him in the back and the little rat still protected him. Even dying— _no, he’s not dying_ but he is, because that shot would have torn through a vein, and she could smell the hot pulse of blood leaving his body—he still thought he had some power here.

Something impacted her chest. Ow. She stepped back, looking down. Another bullet slammed into the vest her vessel wore. The other hunter, the small one.

The next bullet whistled by her ear. She was being warned.

Gaddy didn’t like being warned.

“What are you doing?” she heard Isska snarl.

“Isska, grab them!” she replied, before ignoring her in favour of her power. She raised his hand, reaching with her dark, thrumming power for the skinny agent. He was staggering towards the hunter, blind with shock, shoved along by the stupid-haired idiot. They could have escaped. Now, she was going to rip the agent out of their hands and then she was going to bleed them both dry. She reached. Grabbed. The dark power lashed out.

And missed.

They must have felt it coming, _somehow_. Fucking hunters. The agent vanished into the shrubs of the woods, propelled by the hunter behind him. Just out of reach.

Not the hunter though. Close enough.

She grabbed him instead, laughing as the man _oomphed_ as his chest hit the dirt and knocked his air out of his lungs. Humans were weak. She made sure to knock his head against the dirt a few times while dragging him back. In her ear, something crackled, a whiny human voice. With a savage twist of her powers, she fried it. And every other piece of chattering human devices in the vicinity.

She couldn’t have them calling for help, after all.

“Sam!” the other hunter screamed. How pathetic. Even hunters whined.

The hunter named ‘Sam’, of all things, struggled against Gaddy’s hold on him. Isska stood over him, scowling. “Really?” she asked, glancing down at him doubtfully. “He’s not one of them.”

“You can’t have me,” the man growled, twisting and choking. “I’m protected.”

Oooh. Mistake. Isska was a whiny brat, but she so _loved_ a challenge. She opened her mouth, the black form of her boiling free and flowing into the man. Her vessel collapsed, empty. The hunter stopped struggling, and flexed his arms curiously.

Theirs now.

Gaddy laughed some more and, inside, she could feel her vessel screaming.

 

* * *

 

Those fucking _bitches_ had Sam.

Dean swore, skidding to a stop and pacing in a tight circle, gun slippery in his sweaty hands. What _now_? It was impossible. Their anti-possession tattoos—there was no _way_ what he’d just seen happen had happened. Unless… unless they weren’t demons. And if they weren’t demons, Dean was in _way_ over his head. Shit fucking _fuck._

A branch cracked distantly. The demon-things, giving chase. One of them riding his fucking _brother_ , and, oh man, he was going to burn each and every one of them for that. Gonna burn them and kick Sammy’s ass when he got him back to show him exactly how not pleased Dean was that the idiot sacrificed himself for… Dean turned his head.

The agent they’d rescued was slumped against a tree, his skin rapidly whitening as blood pumped steadily from his shoulder. Dean swore again, because he needed to be back there saving his brother, but, instead, he was stuck here with this fucking fed who was probably just going to die anyway and…

The agent blinked and looked up at him. There was some clarity in his eyes, some tiny amount. Dean had been shot before. It wasn’t exactly fun; he felt for the dude.

“My team,” he gasped, his voice thick with pain, and struggled to stand. Left hand fumbling for his empty holster—Dean had his revolver, but he sure as fuck wasn’t giving it to him when the man didn’t even know what way was up—his right arm hanging low and grossly limp. Probably nerve damage. Fuck. “I have to help them.”

“You have to come with me,” Dean corrected him, deciding. He wasn’t gonna let the man die. The kid, basically. He was… fucking hell, this guy looked to be the same age as Sam. Same stupid floppy hair. Same puppy-dog brown eyes. _Fuck._ “Come on. Up. We gotta move, and then you can pass out. But I’m not carrying you, Cinderella.”

The agent didn’t fight him. All he did was obey as Dean looped the arm that wasn’t shot to shit around his shoulders and heaved him up, stumbling alongside. “Emily?” he mumbled once, chin tipping forward and eyes shuttered. Damn. Damn shit shit damn. They were only ten feet from the car. Dean would fucking _drag_ him the rest of the way if he had to. Sam would never let him live it down if he left the guy here to die.

“Yeah, yeah,” he coaxed, practically boosting the man off of his feet and charging towards the lurking shape of the Impala. Oh man. Kid was gonna bleed all over Baby. “That your girlfriend? You even into girls? You don’t look like you’d even know what a girl is. Well, she’s over here, okay? Just in this car. You get in and be good and don’t die on me, and I’ll take you to her.”

He tugged the back door open, folding the man in like an overcooked noodle, before bounding into the front. There was a part of him that was raging about leaving his brother, but he couldn’t help Sam if they both ended up meat-sacks for demons. And he couldn’t help Sam until he knew what they were up against.

“Don’t die,” he ordered the fed again, the motor roaring to life and tires kicking out as he coaxed speed out of his darling. Shit for the gears. _Damn._ “I don’t want to get busted with a dead fed in my backseat. That kinda thing tends to tick people off, you know?”

The fed didn’t respond.

 

* * *

 

Emily was in front of her, until she wasn’t. JJ staggered to a stop, almost sprawling over a twisted root furling up from the ground that she had to leap to avoid, and tried to control her breathing enough that she could listen to the world around her. Through the crash of the wind through the trees, the wheezing of her breath, the dull monotonous beat of pain radiating from where Rossi’s weapon had come slamming down on her temple. Why? Why had he done that? And Emily… the fear in her eyes when she’d taken him out.

And _Spence_.

She’d run away. She was hurt and dizzy and confused, and she’d let Emily drag her away instead of telling Morgan and Rossi to cut it out, knock it off, couldn’t they see that Reid was hurt?

Her earpiece hummed. “This is Agent Jareau with the FBI,” she murmured into it, but only silence returned. “Hotch? Morgan?” _Reid?_ She couldn’t actually have seen what she’d thought she’d seen. There was no way. No way in the world that Aaron Hotchner had gunned Spencer down in front of them.

Where was Emily?

The wind faltered for a moment, her eyes unable to settle on any one detail through the thrashing shadows of branches and leaves whipped into a frenzy. A voice floated through.

“Come on, Jayge. We were just playing around. Honest—come back! Reid wants to show you something!” It was Morgan’s voice, but it _wasn’t_ Morgan. The man she’d worked with for seven years had never sounded so… manipulatively coaxing. JJ swallowed her breath and pressed back against a tree, shivering, trying to remember when she’d let go of Emily, when she’d lost sight of her…

“JJ, come out. That’s an order. Now!” Rossi. Or… not-Rossi. What was going on?

She fumbled for her cell at her belt, fingers stabbing at the screen uselessly, numb from the cold. Her gun was gone, probably dropped back at the barn. Unarmed. Unarmed, but not like it would have helped if she _was_ armed, because JJ was many things but capable of shooting one of her teammates was not one of them.

The phone hummed in her ear. “Georgia State Patrol Dispatch,” droned a voice in her ear. “Are you in distress?”

“This is Agent Jareau with the FBI,” JJ began, turning to peer around the tree. “Part of the BAU working with Sheriff Cairns—” She turned again, and Morgan was grinning at her.

“Hi,” he said, and grabbed the cell. She didn’t think. She brought her knee up into his gut, slammed the palm of her hand into his nose, and ran. Ducked under Rossi’s arm as the man lunged at her from behind. Tripped, kept running. Kept. Running. She could hear them pounding after her. They could shoot her. Her back was open. The adrenaline surge from _that_ thought was enough to pick up her speed, feet flying over the forest floor, hurtling unstoppably towards—

The ground dropped out from under her and she fell.

Hit water. Underwater.

Still conscious. She gasped, choked, and dived. Pressed herself against the slimy, ridged wall of the riverbank, just below the surface. Hidden by a spray of branches over top of her. When she poked her mouth out just enough to breath, her exposed face instantly chilling in the wind, there was no sound but the storm and a croak of a frog nearby.

And a footstep.

She froze. And waited.


	3. Ex. 8:16-19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And the LORD said [...] Stretch out thy rod, and **smite** the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt." […] When Aaron stretched out his hand with the rod and struck the dust of the ground, lice came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became lice._
> 
> _Exodus 8:16–17_

Reid woke up once to a man hunched over him, hot breath on his face and a white-hot stinging pain radiating up and down his left side as the man’s hands pressed down on him.

“So I was taking you to the hospital and yeah, change of plans,” the man said, and Reid looked down to find his hands coated in blood, so much blood, he could calculate how much but his brain was misfiring, shutting down, reeling. “It’s not as bad as it looks.” The man paused. “Okay, so it’s totally as bad as it looks. Mostly the… exit wound. Ah. Cas? Now would be a good time to dance on in here with your magic helping hands.”

The man was talking to himself, Reid was starting to feel cold and disconnected from it all, and it just seemed easier to…

Sleep.

When he woke up again, he was on a bed. Moving was weird because when he did so, the bed pitched and swayed under him _(blood loss? are you still bleeding? make sure. you’ll die if you are)_. His vest was gone. His shirt was a bundled wad of bloodied material at the end of the bed. All he had on was a tightly knotted, thick weave of bandage around his shoulder and back. It felt sodden, heavy. Tied in a tourniquet style. Reid whimpered, reaching up his good hand to brush at his right bicep. He felt nothing.

Fuck.

Then he blinked.

The light had shifted in the room, and his left arm was… handcuffed to the bedpost. With his own cuffs.

Fuck fuck.

Turning his head, he found the shorter man from the barn staring at him. Reid blinked, trying to chase the cobwebs from his mind, trying to… remember. Remember past the pain and the haze of shock. Snippets of Hotch. Hotch walking towards him. Thin woods. A storm.

“My name is Spencer Reid,” he said first, tugging ineffectually at the cuffs and listening to them rattle ominously against the wood. If he was a hostage, he had to humanize himself. It would increase his chances of surviving. Every movement sent thrills of agony down his side, his head thumping with it. When he struggled against his dizziness and looked down, his skin was pallid, slick with sweat, patterned with flaky trails of dried blood. Heart hammering, breathing slow and shallow. Signs of hypovolemic shock.

“I know,” the man said, holding up his credentials. “How you feeling? Like, physically. Not in the over-sharing emotional-touchy-feely kind of way. Sorry about the cuffs. You were, ah, a little insistent on leaving. Bad idea, by the way.”

“I think I might need to go to the hospital,” Reid heard himself saying, his voice detached. “Please…”

The man shook his head slowly, and his expression was almost apologetic. “Can’t,” he replied shortly, glancing at the black screen of the television. Reid scanned the room. Mini-bar. The remote was chained to the table. Hotel. That meant help was nearby. On top of the mini-bar, keys, ID, and his phone. His earpiece. No gun. The man was still talking. “… whole place is crawling with cops. If you go to a hospital, you’ll be a demon before you can say ‘green Jell-O please.’”

… Demon? Psychotic break. The man was having a psychotic break. But Reid remembered black eyes. Hotch. Hotch with black eyes.

Hotch shooting him.

“Demons?” he squeaked, straining against the cuff, feeling it scrape down his wrist, and the man held his hands up in a placating gesture.

A phone trilled in the next room. “Wait here,” the man said, then glanced at the cuffs. “Look, when I get back, we’ll talk and then I’ll get those off, okay? I just didn’t want you being stupid.” With that, he vanished.

Pick. There was a lock-pick in the cuff of Reid’s shirt. He could get his shirt, get the cuffs open, grab the keys… find his team. Find help. Obviously, he was drugged. Drugged or _something_. Demons didn’t exist. Hotch couldn’t have shot him. He was… hallucinating. Seeing things. Reid swallowed around a crawling, choking panic that was building in his chest. Get the shirt. Get the pick. His right arm was senseless, useless, and he was still bleeding, albeit slower, which meant that he was running out of time. _Don’t panic._ Toeing his boots off, he reached for the shirt with socked feet. Every movement brought the world a little closer, black edges threatening the corners of his vision. He could do this. This was doable.

He could do this. The sound of the man arguing with the phone floated through from the other room. _“… damnit, Bobby, I’ve got a fed handcuffed to my bed! And not the fun kind, either…”_

He had to do this.

 

* * *

 

She’d lost JJ. She’d fucking _lost JJ_.

How?!

One minute, JJ was behind her, the rhythmic thump of her feet on the loam narrating their desperate flight from their crazy-ass team members; the next minute, Emily was alone. Alone, except for the wind and the rasp of her breath through her tightening chest.

Stopping, she closed her eyes. Just for a second. _Compartmentalize._ She tucked the fear and the confusion to the back of her mind to be forgotten. Took the worry and the anxious, clawing paranoia of the sound of trees around her and instead channelled them into a focused calm, a practised ease. Settled her muscles and her posture so instead of pressing back into herself, a tight ball of spring-wound nerves, she was easy on the balls of her feet and arms relaxed, ready to react instantaneously to a threat.

“This is Agent Prentiss with the FBI,” she murmured into her earpiece, and all she received in return was static. She bit her lip, the fear returning determinedly to the front of her brain as the radio resolutely refused to hum with Hotch’s calm reassurances that everything was fine, or JJ giving her location, or Reid’s throaty apology for scaring her. Just… silence. A rock scrabbled nearby, kicked by a careless foot, and she froze. Held her breath, willing her heart to slow so she could listen beyond the sound of her pulse throbbing in her ears.

There it was. A sound from her right. A slow, wet breath. She turned her head, slowly, so slowly, and turned her torso with it. Gun held steady. Sight towards the sound. Careful, careful, it could be JJ. It could be Reid. But what if it was Morgan? Or Rossi?

Or… Hotch.

_Can I do that?_ she wondered, the gun almost slipping in her grasp. _Can I shoot if it’s them? Am I capable of that?_

The answer to that was horribly clear. To save herself? Improbable.

But if they threatened JJ?

_Don’t be them,_ she thought, desperate, and then she stepped out into the open. “FBI, get on the ground,” she barked, and the old man she’d shot stopped and smiled weakly at her.

What.

Blood caked his shirt, stained the carefully pressed flannel, still wet and pooling where the man had tucked it into his jeans this morning as he’d carefully dressed as though for a normal day. The shot, her shot, was true. It wasn’t a disabling shot. It was dead centre in his chest, and he was still walking. Still smiling.

Still talking.

“Hello, agent,” the man said politely. “Give me a moment. My knees aren’t what they used to be.” He kneeled, slowly, mouth twisting into a grimace as his joints popped. “There we go. Nice and slow. You’d better restrain me now. I may be old, but I still pose a physical threat to you, lovey, I assure you.” Emily stared at him. He smiled, again, and held his wrists out, flicking them almost impatiently. A wordless _hurry up then, what’s keeping you so long?_

“How are you alive?” she asked instead, taking a single, cautious step towards him. Still out of arm’s reach.

His eyes bored into hers. “I lived through a World War, lass,” he said, still smiling. His eyes were cold. “You really think your little gun scares me? Pah. You don’t scare me. I don’t scare.”

Crazy. Just a crazy old man, out of his mind—but not their unsub, he couldn’t be. What they’d seen, the crimes they were investigating, they took physical strength, speed, and… this man had kept up with her. Kept up with her with a bullet through his sternum, tracking her easily despite the storm that covered her tracks.

“Flat to the ground, hands behind your back,” she ordered him, striding forward. She just had to get the cuffs on him. Cuff him, check for a vest or something that could have taken the impact of her bullet, check for weapons. Get the fuck out of there. Find JJ, find her team.

When she crouched, he struck, twisting inhumanely with a grotesque _snick_ sound of his spine protesting the movement, and grabbed her chin. Nails bit into her jaw as she jerked back, firing twice into him—once in his throat, silencing him, the second in his cheek, sending a back spatter of misted blood drifting into her face—wrenching her neck painfully as his arm jolted and dragged her head with it. Black smoke roiled from the gunshots and swirled around her, thick and noxious and in her throat, her eyes, her nose and—

_Oh,_ someone whispered in the back of her mind, and Emily reeled, gagged, tried to stand. _You’re a fighter._ It was inside her. Moving her, controlling her. She didn’t need to feel her hands shift on the gun to know the movement wasn’t hers, she just knew, innately. This was her body. Her mind.

_Nope,_ she thought, wildly, and wrenched her hand into the air, gun spiralling away from the sudden movement and clattering against a tree. _Mine._ It was a heady, disorientating few moments of some impossible tug-of-war in her brain. The smoke tried to control her, and she fought back bitterly with everything she had.

But she was losing.

_Just like Hotch,_ she thought suddenly, _and Rossi and Morgan and…_ The grief was sudden and burning. Once again, she saw her friend stumbling as Hotch’s bullet slammed into him, dropping to his knees. Dead? He could be. Shoulder shots were nasty; if they didn’t kill, they crippled. _No!_

The smoke receded, the presence recoiling slightly, but not because she was winning. Instead, the creeping inexorable touch of it turned from determined and uncaring to… curious. Confused…. concerned.

_You love him,_ the voice said suddenly, and it was mournful. When it spoke again, it used her mouth and her voice and her body. “You love this man, this…” A pause. Like her mind was a book left carelessly on a public bench. Emily screamed silently as it pawed through her memories, her emotions, her thoughts. Spencer at a movie with her, grinning shyly as she kicked him to shut up. Lips still moving slightly as he mouthed the words at her, cheekily. At his desk, wordlessly taking half her paperwork so she could go home on time. At her back, covering her in the field. In every different shape he meant to her: agent, co-worker, friend. “Spencer. Hm.” More memories. Hotch, this time. Morgan. Rossi. _JJ_.

_Oh, humans,_ the presence whispered, and pulled back. _I forgot how much you all **love**._

And just like that, Emily was free, blinking and staggering in the weak moonlight. There was a horrible, shuddering gasp behind her, and she spun, unarmed and giddy and sick, to find what should have been a corpse looking at her and smiling lopsidedly, the damage to his face dragging it down to one side. “It’s peaceful here,” the man slurred, but this time Emily could hear the resonating echo to his tone. A woman. Whatever had claimed him, tried to claim her, it was female. “We’ve been lost so long. What we are now feels wrong. To die here, I think, would be nice.”

He fell silent. His chest heaved twice, and stopped.

Emily stared at him because she didn’t know what else to do. Her mind felt raw, scraped, her body convulsing periodically as it tried to readjust to her control. She’d been trapped like a hare in a snare and released, but why?

Her team. They hadn’t been showed the same mercy. Emily took a single, shuddering breath, and looked around for her gun. Walked towards it with wobbly, hesitant steps, and fell to her knees when she stooped and the world pitched forward. Her knuckles knocked against the still-warm barrel, the impact sharp and shocking, fingers wrapping around it almost without conscious thought.

“You _bitch_ ,” snarled a voice to her side, and Morgan strode out of the trees with his eyes locked on the dead man. “She was my _sister_ and you fucking _killed_ her!” He jerked his hand in a swift, sweeping motion. The ground ripped out from underneath Emily, sending her sprawling again, head rapping hard against a tree and bursting a white starburst of light and pain and nausea across her retinas at the impact. “You stupid _cunt_!”

The word was vicious and dropped from Morgan’s mouth as though he’d physically struck her. It wasn’t that the language shocked her—god knows, she wasn’t pious enough to fucking judge—but the cruelty implied by it aimed at her, from her friend, left her almost reeling.

Then the language wasn’t shocking anymore, because he was on her. She kicked up, trying to throw him back, but Morgan was tall, broad, strong, and his first strike was to her jaw and sent her head slamming back into the tree again. And that was it, she was down.

They’d all taken self-defence. Hand-to-hand. Training on how to escape grasps, how to avoid injury, when to retreat and when to advance. Hotch, because he was a gentleman and a little bit of a chauvinist, had taught her and JJ. He’d said it was routine. He’d lied. There was nothing routine about the extra hours he’d spent drilling them in taking a hit or recovering from a blow. He’d done it because they were women, because he felt protective, because he unconsciously trusted the men in the field more than the women, and he’d done it because a lot of the people they faced were stronger than they were, physically.

_One hit,_ he’d repeated, over and over. _It takes one hit and it’s game over. To the head or the neck and you’re out. Don’t let them that close._ Morgan hit her once today and she knew she was down. Close to down.

But Emily Prentiss had never known when to quit.

_Oh my god, I’m so sorry,_ she thought wildly, head throbbing and vomit in the back of her mouth. The back of her neck and shoulders were warm and sticky in the cold breeze, and she wasn’t even fully aware of what she was planning until she’d done it. His fist fell again, and she shot him. It wasn’t a good shot. He was wavering in her view and she had to pick one of the three she could see to shoot, but not even Morgan—or the monster controlling him—could take a bullet to the hip without flinching.

She shot him. He fell.

And she clawed herself up, nails tearing on the rough bark of the tree, and flung herself into the trees. It wasn’t really running. It was more… falling forwards, but upright, and it took every iota of her concentration.

Morgan roared with pain behind her and she didn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

_Please don’t_ , moaned the vessel, and Audėja, for a second, felt almost bad. _Don’t touch her._

Under the overhang they were crouched on, the river flowed sedately by. The shelf of rock jutted out overtop the water, creating a little hole for the agent to tuck herself under like a frightened, twitching mouse completely unaware of the cat perched above. When Audi leaned over, they could see the displacement of the water around the other woman’s body where she shivered with fear and cold despite trying to stay perfectly still.

_JJ,_ whispered the vessel, and there was that guilt again. Audi rolled their eyes just to show the man that she wasn’t going to stop because he felt _bad_ and he surged with anger and thrashed helplessly in her grip. Not a sign of this internal struggle showed outwardly on their features.

_Oh shush,_ she snapped, tired of his whining, and he stilled. _I’m not going to hurt your little princess. My sister needs her. You really think I’m going to prioritise your little mouse over my family?_

Silence. She could feel him thinking, mulling that over. He was an interesting soul, for a human. Cocky and thoughtful and fiercely loyal. Yes, he was interesting. She was glad she’d chosen him, despite his age. The extra years just meant extra experience, extra knowledge she could pull from. Maybe a little more fragile, but never mind; she’d just been careful when claiming him. Nuki would be proud. She was always advocating restraint.

And he was clever. So deliciously clever.

_She’s going to be cold. Frozen, almost. What good is she to you like that?_ he wheedled cunningly. _You don’t need her. I can get you other agents. Younger ones. Stronger. Male. You’d prefer men, yeah?_

_Sexist,_ she snapped back, and he hurriedly switched tactic. Idiot. Didn’t he realize she _was_ him? She knew what he was doing, every move he planned to make. ‘Profiling’ wasn’t going to work on her. _Ones you care about as much as you care about precious little JJ down there? It’s just not as much fun if you don’t love them._

Mistake. She’d forgotten. Her grip on her vessels had never been as strong as Gaddy’s or Isska’s. She let too much of them leak through, too much of them fight, she’d always done it. And it meant they could read her as easily as she could them.

_You don’t mean that,_ he replied slowly, and she could feel him poking at her, pushing, still trying to quietly escape her firm grasp. _You don’t find this fun at all. Part of you doesn’t._

Now she was pissed. _Shut up!_ Sick of waiting, she surged to their feet and stepped forward, dropping heavily into the water with a crash. The woman jerked around, blue eyes wide in her pale face, and screamed. Audi grabbed her hair, fingers threading savagely through the damp strands of it and tugging it taut against her scalp, and shoved her under the surface. The woman kicked, viciously, almost scalping herself in her attempt to get away, but the old man was strong and her strength made him stronger.

_JJ!_ screamed the vessel, battering her with the force of his considerable personality and failing to make any headway. Under their palm, the woman thrashed, stilled, the bubbles slowing. But Audi wasn’t going to kill her. Just… quieten her a little. Dragging a screaming FBI agent through the woods wasn’t her idea of quiet. _Let her go you fucking bitch! JJ, stop, stop, please, stop!_

Audi dragged her up. The agent spluttered, limp, lips purpled from cold and lack of oxygen. Her eyes were red, swollen. Against their chest, her hand fluttered weakly, trying to press them back but lacking any semblance of force.

_Oh you stupid, horrible fucking bitch,_ the vessel was sobbing, almost crying, his mind a turmoil of shock and anger and _hate_. Ignoring him, Audi tugged the woman with her, shifting her grip under her arms and lifting her bodily up onto the bank, rivets of water running around them from their sodden clothes. The woman—JJ? —lay limp on the bank. They loomed overhead.

_She has a son,_ her vessel tried, one last attempt. _Please. A son and a husband. Let her go. Just keep me, I won’t fight you._

“Oh, she’s a pretty one.” Sergė, tripping out from the woods with a cat’s smile, gleeful and hungry. “Is she mine?”

_No, no, no, please. I have money. Connections._

Audi took a breath. It wasn’t that she was upset. She wasn’t, she didn’t _care_ , but the vessel did and it was distracting having him wailing. Under them, the woman sensed her danger and tried to roll onto her hands and knees, to drag herself away. Audi put their boot between her shoulder-blades and pushed her firmly into the mud, ignoring her vessel’s moan of horror. A gunshot cracked out across the forest, ringing through the trees even over the sound of the building storm. And another, immediately after. Sergė’s young face went round with surprise, blue eyes widening guilelessly. The other woman agent was still free. Still armed.

_Fuck yes, Prentiss,_ the man growled. _She’ll hunt down every one of you rats!_

Rude. Apparently, he was done begging. Good. She hated to hear an old man whine.

_If she kills us,_ she replied, jerking her head towards Sergė at the same time to wordlessly command her little sister to hurry up. _She kills your precious team members. Just like the skinny one that Gaddy put down like a **dog**._

Sergė walked towards them, crouching, digging her fingers cruelly into the agent’s pretty face as she pulled her mouth up out of the mud.

_You didn’t kill him. He’s not dead. Hotch wouldn’t have done that._

Just to prove him wrong, so horribly wrong, she used his hands to hold blondie down as Sergė claimed her, and made sure they didn’t look away.

_I made you do that,_ she said after, as Sergė wiped mud from her new face, the old one lifeless in the muck. Audi’s vessel was silent. _And Gaddy is so, so much crueller than I. Don’t doubt me, or when we find his corpse, I’ll show you just how delicious you humans taste._ Sick, roiling horror answered, but he didn’t speak again. There. She didn’t need to push them out of their minds to control them.

Her way was so much more satisfying.

 

* * *

 

Gaddy sulked. The fed and the hunter had gotten _away_. And Verpi was mad at her. It sucked being the youngest. No one took her seriously. And after she’d done such a good job by taking the tough-faced agent.

Well, yeah, sure, stupid Isska wanted stupid Verpi to have it, but whatever. Gaddy _deserved_ it. They always gave her the small, shit vessels. _You’ll cause less trouble in this vessel_ , she imagined them saying, smirking at her, _laughing_ at her. Unlikely. Gaddy could cause trouble in any vessel. Oooh, but this one… this one was something _else_. A Unit Chief. A leader. The humans would follow him obediently. What _fun_.

Once Verpi stopped being a spoiling prude and let her go, anyway.

“What do we do about the one who escaped? The woman?” Isska’s voice still simmered with anger, pacing the stretch of gravel by the abandoned vehicles. “If she gets to authorities and shoots her mouth off, we’re going to have a lot of difficult questions to answer.”

“What does it matter?” Audi. Pacing also, but not angry. Tense. Stressed. She didn’t like being away from Metan. At her feet, Sergė sat cross-legged, her eyes half-closed and face smug. At least _she_ was pleased with how things were going. But then again, Sergė had always been happiest when things were chaotic. “We can get away from the police. We have the know-how.”

“You think they’re going to let a bunch of feds just skip away gaily into the sunset?” Isska spat, irritably brushing her vessel’s stupid hair out of its face. “ _Especially_ after Gaddy fucking shot one of them! Forget the woman, Metan won’t let her escape—what about the hunter and the man you injured? You don’t think people are gonna be wondering why Agent Hotchner felt it was appropriate to shoot his subordinate?”

“Say it was him committing the murders,” Gaddy suggested, folding her arms and pouting. “I was just doin’ my job.” Even in her new vessel’s deep voice, she sounded petulant and whiny. Verpi frowned at her.

“No.” Sergė’s voice was soft. They all fell quiet. Sergė was vain, but the bitch knew how to manipulate. “The woman may escape Metan. Creatures have before, when she hunted alone. And Audi is here.” Audi looked like she was going to defend her twin, but Verpi silenced her with a look. “The other agent will likely die without one of us inhabiting his body. So, we tell them that Agent Prentiss is responsible for his death. She’s working with the hunters. Perhaps she’s been working with them for a long time. My vessel, this JJ, she has all kinds of interesting thoughts about Miss. Prentiss. She’s gone rogue before. And David Rossi and Aaron Hotchner are both _greatly_ respected. If they denounce her, she’ll be in cuffs before sundown.”

“And what of Verpi and I?” Isska demanded, tugging at her hair again. Gaddy smirked. It delighted her that Isska was annoyed by her vessel. “We still require bodies that are linked to yours, or our powers won’t return. We are weaker divided.”

Audi shuffled her feet, coughing gently. “Well,” she said, mouth twisting almost unhappily. Being sentimental again, no doubt. Traitor. She’d stab them all in the back for a human if they gave her the chance, if she didn’t love Metan so much. “JJ has a son…”

_Oh._

“So do I,” Gaddy said, face splitting into a grin, and she reached down deep into her mind and poked at the miserable ball of human huddling down there, blocking out the world. _Hey you,_ she called, mocking. _What’s your son’s name? Jack? Little Jack? How cute._

Her vessel’s anger was instant and burning, and she laughed. Oh, how she _loved_ children. They were… delicious.

And they only needed one.

 

* * *

 

It was disconcerting, hunting alone. She wasn’t used to it. Audi was always by her side, and Metan just _knew_ that without her there the silly bitch was probably getting all sappy and sympathetic again. It was pathetic how easily some of her family felt swayed by their vessel’s emotions.

She didn’t have that problem, not at all. The man, _Derek_ , had whined and fought her for all of a minute before she’d crushed every last shred of his personality out of him. Now, she was blissfully alone and so wonderfully powerful in this body. In that, at least, she could thank him. He had delivered her the most wonderful tool. Despite the pain of the stupid, dark-haired slut’s bullet in her hip, she pressed on. Limping but doggedly determined. _Hunting_. Perhaps Audi would have brought her quarry down by now and would be looking for her. Then she could get in front and herd the woman back.

Never mind. Even alone and injured, Metan didn’t give up. The vessel wouldn’t die until she let it do so, and she had no intention of giving _this_ up. And the slut was hurt. It was visible in her eyes in the second before the gun had fired. Metan had knocked her stupid; it was only a matter of time before she started running in circles.

Metan was patient.

She padded after the scent of fear and blood and she didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Maybe if they caught the woman before one of her sisters required it for their vessel… maybe they’d let Metan have a little _fun_ with it. Audi wouldn’t like it, but Audi did as Metan told her. Yes. That was a good plan. She’d catch the human they called _Prentiss_ , and she’d show her exactly how powerful this new body of hers was.

 

* * *

 

“God _damnit_ , Dean, why you gotta get into this shit all the time? Can’t I leave you boys alone for ten damn minutes without you getting possessed or crazy or _dead_?”

Dean ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated, pacing with the phone pressed to his ear. Bobby was _pissed_. Probably with good reason because this was the third time this month they’d called with bad news but, honestly, it wasn’t their _fault_. Not really.

Not this time, anyway.

“Aww come-on, damnit, Bobby, I’ve got a fed handcuffed to my bed! And not the fun kind, either. And with Sammy all possessed, I really need a hand out here.”

Silence. “You have a what in your where?” Bobby squeaked, and Dean heard the distinct sound of a can being placed on a table in exactly the kinda way that suggested Bobby had just tuned into the conversation ready to rip him a brand new asshole. Hoo boy. “Wait, hang on, I don’t want to know details. Get rid of the fed, Dean! The hell you doin’ bring home a g-woman—”

“Man,” Dean correctly absently, and Bobby spluttered.

“I said I don’t want to know! —” Bobby really wasn’t focusing on the important thing, like the demon-y Sam, and Dean scowled at the wall as though Bobby could see how pissed he was. Maybe he could. Who knew the things the man was capable of… “Stop frowning at me, Dean. Get rid of the fed and get to a library. If those demons you been chasing possessed Sam despite his tattoo, then they ain’t demons. And you ain’t gonna be doing shit to them till you know what you’re up against.”

“Problem with the whole tossing the fed out,” Dean said, rocking back onto his heels and glancing towards to oh-too-silent bedroom. Dude had probably died on him. Shit. “He’s injured. Badly injured. Like, I hope he doesn’t have any dinner plans tonight kinda injured cos he isn’t gonna be making them.”

“Drop his ass at a hospital and let them deal with it. Your priority is finding out what you’re up against and getting Sam out of there. You don’t have time to be dragging around a half-dead—wait, why did you handcuff him to the bed if he’s that hurt?”

Apart from the entire team of brainwashed and crazy feds they had on their ass now? Dean bit back a reply that was pert and would probably test whether or not he was too old for a good old Bobby-style grounding, complete with no TV or beer. “Because they wanted him bad. Real bad. I figure, no matter what kind of creepy spook they are, our best bet isn’t to hand them what they want on a silver platter.”

Bobby huffed. Dean almost smirked, but his eyes skimmed the room and landed on Sam’s abandoned laptop, closed and partially hidden by the book his brother had been reading before they’d started tracking the demons. Ah hell. It was hard to find this whole thing funny when Sam was who knows where doing god knows what and Cas was _still_ ignoring his prayers for help and the fed was probably fucking dead…

“Alright, Dean, look. You have your new friend’s credentials somewhere there, yeah? If not, search him. Don’t be weird about it. Find them and give me his name and badge number, and I’ll see what I can dig up on him. Maybe there’s something there. But I got nothing on these demon-whatevers of yours. If there’s an answer to them, it might be in the town’s records. You have to start there. Local legends, myths, you know, the thing Sam does while you pull his hair and call him names. Real work.”

Dean was already moving to the bedroom where the man’s belongings were. “That’s uncalled for,” he protested, before stepping into the room and finding that maybe they had bigger problems. “Ah, shit.”

“What? What’s going on? Dean?”

The bed, ruffled and soaked in blood, was empty, cuffs hanging loose from the headboard. The man was gone. So were his credentials, cell-phone, and…

Dean’s keys.

Dean looked at the open window right as Baby roared to life outside.

“Sonofabitch!” Dean hollered, “That skinny fucks touching my car! I’ll kill him!” He ran outside, just in time to see the tail end of his car skidding out of the parking lot.

Fuck.


	4. Ex. 8:20-32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And the LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh; lo, he cometh forth to the water; and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go, that they may serve me. Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send **swarms** of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 8:20–21_

It had been a very trying week. Chasing after his brothers and sisters in heaven was proving to be a great deal more exhausting than Cas had been prepared for. And now, right when it almost seemed like he was about to get a break from the mindless politics and careful deliberations he’d been trapped in while trying to stop said brothers and sisters from causing a heaven-wide uproar over ‘workers’ rights’, something that Cas was pretty sure wasn’t in any bible he’d ever read, there was a niggling little prayer following him around.

The prayer, when he poked at it, was loud, obnoxious, and very, very Dean.

Cas sighed, told Kilial he’d be back as soon as possible and _not_ to contact him unless heaven was on _fire_ , and then stepped down into yet another of the delightful abodes that the Winchester brothers were so fond of sleeping in. This one, Cas was happy to note, had a mini-fridge _and_ rats. Normally they only had one or the other. Cas enjoyed rats. They were truly marvellous animals.

“Do you know rats giggle when tickled?” he told Dean, who appeared to be staring out the window with an expression as though someone had… well, the last time he had looked quite like that, Sam had backed the Impala into a wooden post. That had not been a good day. Dean whirled around to face him and Cas got a glimpse of the room behind him, complete with the blood-soaked mattress.

Oh.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, stepping forward, concern sparking. This always happened. He left them alone for a _week_ and they did something terrible to their bodies, with no regard for how painfully _mortal_ they were. “Where are you hurt? Show me.”

“Cas, fuck!” Dean yelled in a volume that was really quite unnecessary in the small space. In the walls, Cas heard rats squeak and bolt for safety, startled. Poor rats. He frowned at Dean, disapproving. “Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling for hours!”

“I was busy with my heavenly duties,” Cas said, scolding gently. Dean would never learn to curb his reckless mannerisms without some guidance. “But I’m here now. What is it you need? Is that your blood?” The blood was continuing to be a concerning mystery that Dean seemed inclined to ignore. That was bothersome.

“Okay, whatever, look. You gotta angel hop over to my car and get her back!” Dean’s eyes were wild. He was very distressed. Cas drew his brows together in a look he’d seen Sam use when attempting to be comforting and considered how best to calm him. Perhaps a ‘hug’? “Now, Cas! Before he drives it into a wall or scratches it or changes the radio, come on!”

“Who has your car?” Cas was very confused. Dean was being _very_ confusing. When Cas had once asked Sam if a ‘hug’ would be an appropriate way of calming his brother, Sam had been very supportive of the idea. “Dean, I think it would be helpful if you were calmer in order to explain the situation to me more adequately. Does Sam have your car? Are you fighting with him again?” Dean spluttered, his face reddening. Was he about to cry? Cas hoped not. He stepped forward, and wrapped his arms awkwardly around Dean’s shoulders. This was a hug, wasn’t it?

Dean stopped spluttering and went stiff. “What are you doing?” he said, voice muffled by Cas’ coat.

“Calming you,” Cas explained. The hug lingered.

“… Please stop.”

Perhaps Sam had been mistaken. Cas let go and moved away. At least, he noted, Dean wasn’t panicking anymore.

“Cas.” Dean spoke very slowly and carefully, even as he moved to pick up his weapon and, interestingly, another gun that Cas had never seen before. “Someone has stolen my car. An FBI agent. I need you, right now, to bounce on over there and. _Get. Her. Back._ Okay? Like, really quickly, because there are bad people after this particular FBI agent and my car is now between them and him.”

That… was odd. But simple enough. “Do you wish for me to return with the FBI agent?” Cas enquired, because Dean was always very difficult if his instructions were misconstrued. “I feel as though he’s likely to protest my retrieval of him.”

“Probably, I don’t know, he’s not exactly the fighting type—just hurry up!” Dean’s voice cracked a little on the final word. He threw one of his telephone devices at Cas, waving his hands at him in a fast _go away_ motion. “Call me when you get him, okay, and I’ll come to you. Do _not_ drive my goddamn car or I swear to god, I’ll—”

Cas decided that he’d overstayed his welcome, and stepped into the Impala. “Hello,” he said to the pale-faced man driving it. The man looked at him and promptly sent the car careening into oncoming traffic with a jerk of his hand. Quickly, Cas tugged the wheel back towards the correct side of the road with a flick of his thoughts, bringing them back to safety. Over-correcting, the tail end of the car spun out, flinging them onto the other side of the road before shuddering to a stop. Cas heard, distinctly, the _thunk_ as the trunk smacked solidly into a fence-post.

Oh dear.

“What the—” the man began, turning to face him, his eyes very, very wide. Cas had time to note the copious amount of blood on the man’s torso—ahh, so it was _his_ blood—and the man’s lack of a shirt, before he clearly decided that the best course of action was one of a hasty retreat.

“Oh,” Cas said, as the man flung himself out the car and bolted into the neighbouring field with a truly impressive vault of the wobbly fence. “Oh dear.” Dean had specified to bring them _both_ back. Cas sighed, and materialized in front of him. “Please stop.”

The man skidded to a halt, glanced back at the car, and then slowly looked at Cas. He blinked twice and swallowed heavily. His chest was heaving considerably, a slow trickle of blood working its way down from the tightly bound bandage around his shoulder and upper torso. Cas examined it in the beat of frozen shock, concerned with the odd discolouration of the arm.

“Okay,” the man said calmly, and then tried to run again. Cas stepped in front of him once more, and smiled. That would put him at ease. Sam always said to smile if people were looking at him strangely, and that it would make things better.

“My name is Castiel,” he announced, and the man almost toppled backwards in an effort not to run into him. “I am an Angel of the Lord and I am here to help you.”

“Okay,” the man said again, but this time his voice squeaked. “I think.” Pausing, Cas heard a distinctive whistle in his breathing as he struggled to breathe around his panic. He was distressed. “I’m hallucinating.”

Cas looked around the empty field. “What are you seeing?” he asked, curiously. When he looked back, the man punched him in the jaw. It didn’t hurt. Well, it didn’t hurt _Cas_ anyway. “Ow,” Cas said helpfully, despite this, because maybe it would make him feel better. The man just whined and hugged his hand close to his chest, taking two staggering steps backwards. “Stop running. You’re hurting yourself more. I’m here to help.”

Stepping forwards in case the man fell, which he appeared close to doing, Cas suddenly found himself on the ground, cheek pressed into the rich smelling soil. The man had, in a burst of movement that was highly impressive considering his current state, pinned him down quite neatly. Cas squirmed, just to give the impression that he _was_ trapped, said, “Well done, you’ve got me,” and then, since they were touching now and it seemed an opportune moment, healed the man’s shoulder.

Silence. “You can probably let me go now,” Cas suggested, and the man did just that, sliding off him and landing heavily on the damp earth. Rolling over to face the man, Cas found him staring at his shoulder, touching tentatively at it with his fingers. Already, his colour was improving. “I am,” Cas repeated, puffing his chest out proudly, “an Angel of the Lord, and I am here to help you. Please?”

The bandage unravelled, revealing pink, healthy flesh streaked with old blood. The man flexed his arm twice, bunching his fist and loosening it, before taking a slow, deep breath. “I’m not crazy,” he murmured, more to himself than Cas, so Cas didn’t reply. “I’m moving my arm. The extensive nerve damage caused by the bullet meant that I _couldn’t_ physically move it, no matter what level of delusion I was experiencing. Which means I’m either hallucinating moving my arm, or I’m not crazy and you just…” He trailed off, blinking frantically.

Distressed again. Cas knew how to help with that too.

“What are you doing?” mumbled the man into Cas’ chest, shaking slightly with what Cas suspected might be fear.

“Hugging you,” Cas explained. “Because you are upset. Are you less upset now?”

The shuddering breath the man took was uneven. “Yes. Very much so. Please, ah. Please let go. I won’t run again.”

Cas smiled once more as he released the man, and the man returned it, the expression a little vacant. There! Sam _was_ right! This human body language was _easy_. If only he could calm his brothers and sisters in such a fashion. “Now, we can return to Dean?” Cas prompted, standing and brushing mud from his coat, before extending his arm down to help the man up. “What is your name?”

The man struggled up and swayed. Still in shock. “Reid. Dr… Agent Reid. I need to find my team, ah… Castiel?” he said, and took a single nervous step back.

“Dean first. He will help you find your team.” Cas reached for him. “Come on, he is this way.”

Dr. Agent Reid’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know where he is?” he asked, uncertain.

Cas beamed. “Because Dean and I share a profound bond,” he declared, and it was _true_. He could find Dean wherever he went. “Do you and your team not share profound bonds?”

Dr. Agent Reid just stared blankly, his mouth slightly open.

Never mind.

Cas reached out, grabbed his arm, and stepped towards the last place he’d seen Dean, taking Dr. Agent Reid with him.

 

* * *

 

This was what Dean would call a no good, dirty, rotten, damn stinking bad ol’ day. Probably one of the worst, and he was including the day he’d been dragged down to hell in that. At least his _car_ hadn’t been dragged to hell with him. And he was trusting _Cas_ of all people to save her? He couldn’t do that. She was his _baby._

He had to go get her.

“Where would I go,” Dean hummed, driving along in his totally-not-hot-wired wagon and trying to find his favourite station on the clunky old radio, “if I was a skinny, about-to-have-my-ass kicked FBI brat with a shot-to-shit-shoulder and a whole team of possessed buddies on my tail.” Well, that was simple. If the man was anything like Dean, he was probably hightailing it back to where he’d last seen those possessed buddies, hoping for a friendly face.

He wasn’t gonna find one.

So, back to the farm Dean trundled. _Trundled._ The car he’d totally-not-stolen seemed to be protesting the rough beginnings of their relationship by refusing to go above thirty miles an hour, no matter how much he coaxed. Oh, he was going to _kiss_ his car when he got her back. He’d forgotten just how sweet she truly was to him. On that thought, Dean realized, he was doing a whole lot more thinking about how much he missed his car than his brother.

… _Sorry Sammy._

The road curled and weaved here, the station wagon chugging with every tight turn, wheels hissing over the leaf-strewn roads. To the sides of the road, trees towered above them. _Who’d live out here anyway_ , Dean thought irritably, correcting the car again. _Just asking to get demons—_

A woman shot out onto the road in front of him.

Dean slammed on the brakes. After a few, heart-stopping seconds, the brakes actually realized he’d pressed on them, and began to fucking _function_. Not quick enough though. He was gonna—

“Move it!” he screamed, laying on the horn. She bolted backwards, tripping into the undergrowth. The car squealed, skidded, and finally came to an unhappy stop with a choked splutter that probably implied she wasn’t gonna start up again.

Fuck.

“Damn!” Dean barked, smacking the dash and wrenching the door open, abandoning the car with the door hanging open to jog over the woman. He readied his gun as he went, the agent’s revolver at his hip as backup just in case the woman felt like being demon-y. Or whatever they were. “Oi. Lady. You dead?” She didn’t move. Dean peered down the slight slope to her crumpled form. Dark hair. Dark clothes. FBI vest.

Fuck _fuck_.

“God shitting damnit,” he muttered, because there was a slim, slim, slim chance that she _wasn’t_ possessed, and if he left her there to die and Sam found out… “Okay, please don’t go all gross, please? Man, I hate it when the hot ones get crazy…” The soft crunch of his boots on the dry leaves as he cautiously paced towards her was such a quiet noise it made the silence around him even louder. Every step felt wary, his muscles bunching. If she was a demon, she’d be in him before he could shout _no fair!_ He used his boot to jab her tentatively in the spine. “Hey.” Another poke, this time in her shoulder, finger this time. At least… well, she was warm? That was good, right? “Hello? Lady?” One more time, this time under her ear. “Yoo hoo.”

And he found himself flying. Above him, the sky wheeled by peacefully, blue and serene. He gazed at it, the tops of the trees and the _whoosh_ of air beneath him, and then he hit the ground.

Hard.

On his back.

_Oomph._ Ow.

Ow ow ow.

“Get on your stomach, hands flat in front,” the woman said, cool as a cucumber, her gun aimed smack-bang at the centre of his forehead. “Now. And I mean _now_.”

“Gimme. A. Second,” Dean wheezed, trying to breathe. In response, she planted her boot on his hip and rolled him. _Ow ow ow_. “Hey! Police brutality!” His only answer was a foot on his spine, his arms being wrenched back, and the resounding click of cuffs around his wrists. When her palm settled on the back of his neck and shoved his nose forward into the dirt, it really only added to how shit everything had gotten all of a sudden.

“Guess you’re not a demon,” he mumbled into that dirt, tasting it thick on his tongue. _Gross. Guess she also recognised me from the farm..._

“Unless you want to see _real_ brutality,” the woman purred, fucking _purred_ , and Christ she sounded dangerous and… really hot, honestly. Maybe he’d have to repurpose those cuffs after all if she was up for it later… a little ‘thanks for un-possessing my buddies, buddy.’ “You’re going to come nice and quietly up to your little car and you’re going to tell me what the fuck you did to my team, asshole.”

Oh.

“Listen, I can explain,” he continued to mumble into the dirt, except it came out more like “Llmirshcanexploon.” This was super unfair. He couldn’t even _look_ at her like this, see if her face was as nice as her voice. He bet it was. Why were all the stunning ones always FBI? He’d seen Fox  & the Hound. He knew how that kinda love ended. Most of Fox & the Hound anyway. He always had to turn it off before the forest or Sam would start sniffing. But her hands were on his hip, tugging, and his eyebrows shot up. _Woah_. Maybe he _was_ gonna get a chance to see how hot she was… Bobby would be pissed, but that was only cos he never got a chance to—

“This,” spat the woman, dragging his head roughly to the side so he could blink dirt from his eyes and see what she was shoving in his face, “is my co-worker’s gun. My _best friend’s_ gun. And you have about ten fucking seconds to tell me how the fuck you got it before I make you _eat it._ ”

Uh oh.

“I didn’t kill him,” Dean said, and instantly regretted it because the hand digging into the back of his neck dug in a little harder at the very mention of _kill_. “Honest. Look, I’m on your side—”

“Five seconds.”

“—he’s back at my hotel, okay! He was hurt and in case you didn’t notice, _agent_ , it was your people who hurt him! Not me. I saved his dorky little ass, and do I get a thank you? Not even!”

The hand loosened. “He’s alive?” she asked, and her voice was breathy with a sick kind of relief that Dean recognised, because he heard it in his own every time he managed to get his brother outta whatever trouble he’d gotten himself into. Dean really hoped Cas had gotten the dude back to the hotel, or something, because it was gonna be super awkward if he got this chick back and found shit-awful amounts of blood and no skinny spit of an FBI agent.

Wait.

“Are you Emily?” he asked, taking a wild stab in the dark. The hand tightened again. _Jackpot_. “Hey, yeah, he talked about you. Talked tons.” _Don’t lay it on too thick, Dean._ That voice sounded a lot like Bobby’s. “I mean, kid wouldn’t shut up. You guys dating? I figure you are. He was all ‘Emily’ this and ‘Emily’ that and if you two aren’t dating, you really should be, because bless his nerdy little heart, I think he’s got it good for you, you know?”

Okay, probably a little thick, but the weight lifted off him, and he rolled himself up, awkwardly. The woman stared at him. _At least_ , Dean thought, _I was right. She **is** hot._

“But you know,” he tried weakly, shooting her his trademark Hundred-Watt Maximum-Dean-Charm smile. It _never_ failed. “I could be wrong, hey. And if he doesn’t work out, you know, I love women with guns. Fight the system, yeah? That’s fan—”

In retrospect, he absolutely deserved her shoving him back into the dirt. He also deserved her ‘accidentally’ smacking his head against the roof of the station wagon after she’d dragged him back there and shoved him in. _Shoulda kept your mouth shut,_ the voice in his head said wisely, and yeah, that was definitely Bobby’s voice.

“Hey, look, that was totally rude of me,” he said, right as she slid into the driver’s seat, noted the lack of keys, and turned back to look at him with one perfectly arched eyebrow raised. _Down boy…_ Dean grinned again. “Oh, yeah, so um, you’re gonna need me to… oh never mind.”  Apparently, she also knew how to hotwire a car as well. Dean could already see their wedding or, alternatively, a really fun night in the slammer. He super wasn’t fussed which.

“Fuck,” she said, as the car chugged once and cut out. “Oh, _fuck_.” That second fuck wasn’t aimed at the car. Dean poked his head up just in time to see one of her co-workers stepping out from the woods, coated in blood and looking _really_ pissed off.

“Fuck,” Dean agreed weakly, right as the other agent opened fire on them.

 

* * *

 

“Let me loose!” hollered the man from the backseat. Emily considered, once again, that maybe she was in waaaay over her head. Ducking, she heard the distinctive whistle-crack of the windscreen partially shattering. The next bullet caved it in, sending a cascade of tempered glass down over her shoulders and back. Morgan wasn’t messing around anymore. Not that he had been at any point, but now there was an innocent— _maybe_ an innocent—in the way. And unless Emily knew the pervert in the backseat was their unsub, she couldn’t let him get hurt. But she was sorely aware of the stakes.

They could die here.

Emily closed her eyes to try to disassociate from what she was about to do, fumbled for her gun, and then felt the car _thump_ down on its decrepit suspension as sudden weight was applied to it.

What?

“Why are you handcuffed?” asked an unfamiliar voice, deep and soft with curiosity. Emily rolled, sending glass scattering from her hair and clothes, and found that the man wasn’t alone in the backseat anymore.

“Karma,” Reid muttered, bizarrely, before yelping and ducking as he caught sight of Morgan through the windscreen. “Woah! Morgan, stop!”

“Reid?” Emily heard herself shout, distantly, because _what the fuck?_ He was shirtless, bloodied, and with a distinctively ‘I’ve had my world rocked’ expression pasted across his face, but he was _there_. Alive.

The relief was dizzying.

Now, she had to keep him that way. “Stay here!” she hollered, and before he could splutter a reply, slipped out of the car and made for the relative safety of the far side of the vehicle. “Morgan, stand down! I don’t want to shoot you!”

“Oh, come on, Prentiss. We both know you ain’t gonna hurt your precious friend. You haven’t got the balls, woman.” That wasn’t Morgan. Morgan would _never_ speak to anyone with such… cruelty. And especially not one of his workmates, the people he respected more than anyone else.

“Yeah, yeah, keep on,” she muttered, tasting bile. In the car, she could hear bickering. _Get the fucking cuffs off, Cas! Perhaps, Dean, this is the chance for you to reconsider your conduct? Guys, I really don’t think this is the time…_ “You’re just making this easier to rationalize, freak.” Her gun shook. She took a deep breath. A tree behind her splintered following another crack of Morgan’s weapon.

He was just taunting them now.

The car roared to life next to her. She had to duck to avoid getting brained by the door as Reid shoved it open, grabbing her by the arm and awkwardly manhandling her towards it. “Get in!” he barked, scooting his ass backwards over the backseat to give her room. The man was in the front seat, shouting, and the stranger who’d arrived with Reid was… walking towards Morgan, completely unprotected.

“Wait,” Emily said, straightening in her seat, but the man she’d arrested—without cuffs, she noted—was already fishtailing the car around and skidding past Morgan with a _whoop_! “Hey, what about that guy?”

“He’ll catch up,” Reid said, cryptically, slouching back with his fingers pressed into the skin below his eyes, giving him an odd dinner-plate expression. Kid looked fucked. Emily took a deep breath, wind whipping painfully into her eyes and the bruising on her face. “Are you okay, Em?”

“Am I okay?” She couldn’t help but laugh at that, a hysterical whining kind of laugh that took her right back to the awkwardness of elementary school. “Reid, you were… shot…” She stared intently at his shoulder. After a beat, he looked down too, lowering one of his hands to tentatively poke at it, like he wasn’t quite sure it was real either. To poke at the smooth, unmarred skin. There was blood, sure, but fuck all else.

“I… got better?” he tried, and looked back up at her, grinning widely. It was unsettling smile. It was desperate and showed far too much teeth and way too much eye and it was basically the smile of someone clinging on grimly to their understanding of the world. Emily opened her mouth to say something to him or maybe to say something to the grime-encrusted man in the front, but the words were torn from her mouth by the wind. She settled instead for reaching out for Reid, just to be sure, just to… touch.

A man appeared between them, tan hair ruffled and trench coat torn by bullet holes.

“Argh!” Emily shrieked, jerking away from him.

Startled by her shout, Reid yelled too, “Aargh!” Her scream, she was distantly pleased to note, was much less high pitched.

The man opened his mouth to say something, and she punched him, immediately regretting it as apparently the magical fucking teleporting man also had a jaw made of fucking _cement_. Ow ow ow.

Sad blue eyes turned on her. “Ow?” the man said, smiling awkwardly. “Is it customary for the FBI to strike people upon meeting them? My experiences so far have suggested so. Dr. Agent Reid was also quite violent upon our introduction.”

“Don’t hit him,” Reid piped up from the other side, head down as he wrestled with his seatbelt. “Trust me, it hurts us more than it hurts him.” As an example, he held up his hand, showing the red-swollen marks across his knuckles. Huh. Kid had actually hit someone. Emily, if she hadn’t been so goddamn _confused_ about the twist her day had taken, would have almost been gleeful over that mental image.

“Okay, this is fine,” she said loudly, and Reid nodded along like he _really_ needed to hear what she was saying. Jesus. If this was hard for her, she couldn’t imagine how Mr. Science himself was coping with the blatant violation of every law of physics she knew. Probably sobbing internally. “This is all fine. We need to find our… team. Our friends. They’re a bit…”

“Crazy,” said the driver promptly, turning to look at them quickly as they came out onto a straight. “Cas, where’s my car, man?”

“Possessed,” the man between her and Reid offered, ignoring the driver. “You’re bleeding. Here.” He reached towards her, ignoring her growl, and brushed his fingers against the back of her head. The throbbing headache and nausea she’d been cultivating since her fight with Morgan vanished. She blinked.

“Hurt,” Reid said, wiggling up again. “We have to find them. Help them. Castiel, you can help them, right? Fix them like you fixed me?”

“I’m not sure,” ‘Castiel’ said slowly, turning to look at him. “These creatures, whatever have possessed your companions… they resist my powers. Whatever they are, they are stronger than I am.”

“Stronger than an angel?” said the driver, and Emily blinked again and stared hard at the back of his head.

_Stronger than a… what?_

Okay. Crazy. She was in crazy-town with a man in a trench coat and her pervy buddy from the farm, and she had to get out of here. Get Reid out of here, before they started handing out free Kool-Aid. Trying to communicate this to Reid was difficult, as he was vacantly picking at the flakes of blood on his torso, gazing oddly at Castiel like he was trying to logically explain his existence. Finally, mostly by jerking her head violently in a _look the fuck at me_ motion, she caught his attention.

“Are you experiencing a seizure?” Castiel asked politely, tilting his head like a fucking cocker spaniel and examining her. “Or are you distressed?”

“Don’t do it,” Reid and the man in front both said at once, Reid flushing nervously and snapping his mouth shut. The driver continued, “Seriously dude, she’ll kick your ass.”

“It’s okay, Em, I think they’re… on our side?” Reid said softly, biting at his lip. “Maybe?”

“I don’t even know _who_ they are.” Her hands pressed against her thigh, nails grating against her trousers and into the flesh beneath. _Calm. Compartmentalize. This is fine. Reid seems fine. That means the others are going to be fine too… JJ…_

“This,” Reid pointed to the man between them, helpfully, in case he was referring to some other magical man, “is Castiel.” He paused, before adding, “He’s an Angel of the Lord,” in a tone that suggested he thought he was being helpful. Clearly _already_ gotten in the Kool-Aid.

“And that’s… Dean?” Reid frowned as he introduced the other man, mouth twisting. Apparently, even this new crazy Reid didn’t like the dude. Good. Emily had seen the leer the guy had given her when she was detaining him. Sleaze. “He likes to handcuff people to beds and leave them to _bleed out_ , but he’s _apparently_ going to help us. Apparently.”

“Sarcasm a little harder, dork,” Dean muttered, words barely audible over the wind. “Look, we can’t go back to the hotel because Sam—that’s my brother who got his ass beat by demons saving your skinny ass—knows where it is, and he’s got a demon in his head just like your buddies do. So we need a new place to hunker down, because I promise you, you guys are both _numero uno_ on their most wanted lists right now. And we’ll explain everything once we find somewhere to regroup, okay? Also, my car. You touch my fucking car again, and _I’ll_ shoot you.”

“You stole his car?” Emily asked, fighting the temptation to peer into Reid’s eyes just to be sure that it _was_ Reid she was looking at and not some weird… eviler twin. Cooler twin.

Reid jutted his chin out in a stubborn expression Emily recognised from babysitting Henry. “He handcuffed me to a bed,” he said, sulkily. Then he smiled, a cool, angry kind of smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t worry. Once you get it out of the ditch, I’m sure your car will be _just_ fine.”

Dean’s shriek almost made the whole thing worth it.

 

* * *

 

“Agent Prentiss is not to be approached. She must be considered armed and extremely dangerous. If she is sighted, or the man that she is believed to be working with is sighted, observe from a distance and call either myself or one of my team members to alert us. I repeat, Agent Prentiss is _not_ to be approached under any circumstances.” Gaddy couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face at the mixture of stunned and confused—and downright furious—expressions being levelled at the motley mix of BAU members arranged in front of the collective police force.

There was a delightful air of cautious anger rolling through the sea of blue uniforms as the men and women tried to work out whether they should be outraged at the callous murder of a law enforcement officer—even a fed—by another agent, but thrown off by the slightly off-putting behaviour of Spencer Reid’s teammates. Sure, Sergė was doing a wonderful job of looking appropriately teary-eyed, but Audi just looked bored and Metan was still sulking over the painful bullet wound in her hip she was resolutely refusing to deal with. It was chaos.

Gaddy _loved_ chaos.

“I’m sorry,” the sheriff was saying, stepping forward. “Are you trying to tell me one of your agents has _teamed up_ with our killers? And they’ve, what, kidnapped—killed? —your young lad, the skinny agent—where is he? Or his body? What the _fuck_ is going on here?”

“Why would she do that?” another cop snapped, just loud enough for them all to hear. Metan sneered, rolling her eyes. Perched back behind the police, Isska frowned at her. _Behave._

“Agent Prentiss has a history of being… unstable,” Audi said quietly, but the power of the vessel’s voice she was using was enough to silence the restless crowd. “Her mental state has long been of concern to us, but her contacts with the US Embassy allowed her to ignore our pleas for her removal from her post. I’m afraid we’ve long expected something of the kind to occur. Dr. Reid’s youth and relative inexperience allowed him to become a favourite target of her manipulations—this unfortunately masked her extreme jealousy and dislike of his talents and allowed her to form a bond of trust that led to his possible death at her hands.”

Sergė moved to the front of the room. Even Gaddy had to admit, the woman she rode wore grief well. Her eyes were just the right shade of red, her skin white except for the faintest flush across her cheeks. She looked like the picture of a broken friend. She looked _heartbreaking_. And Sergė used it _gloriously._

“Spencer Reid was— _is_ —the godfather to my son, Henry,” she said softly, her voice pitched low but carrying none the less. No one made a sound. “If he is still alive… if she hasn’t taken out her delusions and her paranoia on him… I need your help to bring him home to my son. Please. Look around you. Every one of you here has a co-worker you trust implicitly. A brother, or sister, in arms that you would give your life for. Spencer is my brother, my friend, and my partner… and if it’s too late to save him, it’s not too late to bring him justice. To bring him home so my son can say goodbye to his uncle. Please.” And just like that, just like the easily manipulated sheep they were, Gaddy saw every face in that room settle into a firm determination to do exactly as Gaddy’s clever, clever sister asked.

Emily Prentiss was hunted now, by the very people she sought to protect. And Gaddy had access to her vessel’s memories. She knew exactly what happened to cop-killers. _I hope I get to see her gunned down_ , she purred to the quiet presence deep within her vessel’s mind. He didn’t respond.

But she could feel how he hurt.

 

* * *

 

Castiel had vanished for a while and reappeared with Dean’s belongings and Reid’s ruined shirt. One look at it, and Reid knew he wasn’t going to be wearing that _or_ his FBI vest if they wanted to keep a low profile. And they wanted to keep a low profile.

_“Anyone who has any information about the whereabouts of Emily Prentiss, please call this number… armed and extremely dangerous… psychotic break… FBI task-force leading the hunt…”_

“Huh,” Emily said, in the quiet lull as the two of them waited for Dean to finish wiping their fingerprints from the interior of the stolen car. They sat in the back of the black Impala: Reid picking at the rusted flakes of dry blood encrusting the seats and Emily leaning forward with her chin in her hand listening to the radio informing the world that she was a murderer. “I’ve always wanted to be on the run. Lends me kind of a dashing air, doesn’t it?” She struck a pose, clumsy in the cramped space. “Do you think they’ll let me cover the bruise for my mugshot?” The glint to her eyes betrayed the calm she was forcing. Reid swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat, almost choking on it. Their friends, their co-workers… everyone believed she was a killer. That he was… that she’d _murdered_ him. Her career…

“If I give myself up—” he began, and she snapped a furious look at him.

“Shut up, Reid,” she said harshly. “You do that and you’re… whatever happened to the others… by sundown. Then I have to deal with these bitches having our teammates’ bodies—Hotch’s charisma, Rossi’s cockiness, JJ’s media contacts, Morgan’s smug arrogance, _and_ your brain. I can’t fight that. Not alone. I need you.” She swallowed too, and he could hear the same lump trying to make her voice wobble. It only somewhat succeeded. “To save them, we _need_ you.”

“What we need,” Dean said, slipping into the driver’s seat and tilting his head backwards, brow furrowed, “is to know what the hell we’re up against. Also, I see that fucking dent, dude, and I’m adding it to your tab.”

“They’re not demons,” Cas said, popping into existence in the passenger seat without missing a beat, and Reid felt a nerve under his eye begin to twitch unhappily at the reminder of how messed up this whole thing was. Emily patted his knee, mouth set in a sympathetic line, already at terms with the existence of magic and angels and demons and… Reid moaned and covered his eyes, sinking low in his seat, the seatbelt digging into his stomach through the soft flannel shirt Dean had thrown at him. It wasn’t Dean’s. It was big on Reid, would be bigger still on Dean, and Emily had sniggered at him when she’d seen it and mouthed what he was pretty sure were the words, _Gettum, Cowboy,_ at him.

“So, we probably gotta listen to Bobby and do a whole shit-ton of book reading to work this out,” Dean groaned, letting his head thump onto the steering wheel. “Goddamn, I miss Sammy.”

“Well,” Emily said after a beat, “if you can get the books to us, considering both me and Ennis here have a nice media presence at the moment, we can probably take care of that if you tell us what to look for.”

“I can get the books,” Cas offered, beaming at Reid. Reid smiled back weakly. “How many do you need?”

Emily bit at her lip, and raised one eyebrow at Dean, cocky. When she looked to Reid, expectantly, he set his jaw in a firm line and stared at the other two men calmly. This he could do. _This_ he could focus on… They were doing what they did best. Working as a team.

“All of them.”


	5. Ex. 9:1-7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible **plague** on your livestock in the field—on your horses and donkeys and camels and on your cattle and sheep and goats._

He _looked_ human. When Dean jabbed his finger into his cheek, he _felt_ human. The look he shot Dean in return for the poking was certainly human enough.

“Give it up, he’s real,” Prentiss said, glancing at them from where she was perched cosily on the battered kitchen counter of the house they were squatting in, Sam’s laptop balanced on her knees. “Trust me. We’ve checked.”

Reid huffed, put down the fucking gigantic book he’d just flipped through, and picked up the next one, eyes flickering across the pages. Dean stared.

And then poked him again.

“You know, instead of poking me, you could be, oh I don’t know, _useful_?” Reid snapped, lowering the book. The half-finished book. The dude was basically up to his ears in fucking books and he’d read almost _all_ of them, what the fuck, what the _fuck_. Just Dean’s luck that he’d gotten saddled with an actual _genius_ and forced to hide out in some shitty old house in the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere, Georgia.

“Dude, I hunt demons for a living,” Dean told him seriously. “And you are still the weirdest thing I have ever seen.”

Cas reappeared with a new armful of books and a gleeful expression. “This is fun,” he announced, then looked guilty. “I mean, aside from… Sam. Who I’m sure is not having fun. But we will save him, Dean.”

Dean tried to smile but it felt tight, oddly placed on his face, miserably aware that his brother had been the toy of some bitch-demon-thing for almost a day now, and they were no closer to working out what they were to even begin thinking about making a plan…

“We’re approaching this wrong,” Prentiss said suddenly, closing the laptop with a snap. “We’re starting from nothing. That’s not how we do things. We’re profilers. Why aren’t we profiling?”

“Because we don’t know how to profile demons?” Reid squeaked, his voice high and whiny and immediately grating on Dean’s last nerve. _Maybe the demons will do a one-dork for another trade…._

“But he does.” Prentiss turned her cold-ass stare onto him and part of his belly shrunk into a little ball and tried to hide at that predatory glare… the other part sat up and suggested he move a little closer, get his flirt on. Of course, he listened to the stupid part, because he hadn’t gotten this charming by being smart. Look at Sam, or Agent Dorky. No thanks.

“Alright,” he said, and gave her his best smile, wide and just soft enough to hint at more. She rolled her eyes. _Stone. Cold._ “You do your profiling whatchamacallit, and we’ll do whatever it is we do. Be handsome. All knowledgeable about demon things.” He paused and winked again. “And great in bed.”

Prentiss threw her empty water bottle at his head, only missing because Dean ducked.

“Am I grea—” Cas began, and Dean shushed him quickly because god _no_ , that was a mental image he didn’t need, thank you very much. “Is this to do with the pizza man?”

The two agents looked at Cas, Prentiss’s mouth opening soundlessly before she thought better of the question she was about to ask. “So, they’re sadistic,” she said finally, looking at Reid. “The one in Morgan was positively gleeful about causing… pain.” Swallowing, she looked down, her lip pinched between her teeth to try and hide her emotions.

“Verpi was supposed to have you, but I don’t like sharing,” Reid said suddenly, closing his book and placing it carefully into the ‘read’ mountain, before scooping up another from the notably smaller ‘to-read’ pile. They all looked at him. “That was what the little bo—the demon that… possessed… Hotch said. Before she took him. But none of these books mention a Verpi.”

“You were like… shot. Ten seconds after that. How do you remember that’s what she said?” Dean wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know the answer to that either. Next thing, the dude would be telling him he had a photographic memory or something—

“Perfect recall,” Reid said, itching a lock of his stupid-ass floppy hair out of his eyes. _Of fucking course_ , Dean thought crankily. _King of Nerd City. Sam can be your queen…_ “It’s less than optimal for the spoken word, but shock can occasionally enhance perceptive abilities. Another was referred to as ‘Isska’, but I haven’t found any mentions of her either.”

“They’re not all sadistic,” Prentiss added, and reopened the laptop, typing away. Dean inched forward, picking a likely looking book out of the teetering pile, and flicking absently through just to look like he was contributing. “I…” She trailed off, her eyes on Reid. “One caught me. Got… in me.” Silence. Dean didn’t like the dude, but he kinda felt sorry for him when Reid’s head snapped up to stare at his colleague, eyes widening with horror. Maybe the kid really did have the hots for her. He sure looked upset enough. But then again, Dean would be that upset if it was Cas or Bobby admitting they almost got demonized, and he didn’t want to bang either of them.

“How did you escape?” Cas asked intently, no trace of his usual vacantness in his voice. It was his ‘Angel of the Lord on a mission’ voice, and Dean felt the small spark of _we’re closing in_ eagerness begin to burn in his chest. “There may be a hint to their origins there.”

“She… let me go.” As she said this, Reid made an odd noise, eyebrows furrowed. His eyes scanned the pile of books, mouth thin and fingers rapping against his leg in an offbeat pattern, as though counting silently. Dean watched, fascinated. Prentiss did too. “She was rifling through my thoughts, my memories, and she got… sad. Weird. Made some comment about how much humans love, and then slipped back into the dying old man. Then Morgan showed up and— _oh_!”

“What?” Dean and Cas barked at the same time. Reid didn’t seem to be listening, shuffling through the books with lightning fast hands, sorting them into more piles.

“Sisters.” Prentiss lowered the laptop to the counter and slid off, staring at Reid. “Morgan said they were _sisters_.”

“Seven sisters,” Reid murmured. “Seven is a common mythological number. Seven sins, seven heavens, seven Luminaires…”

“Come on, Reid,” Prentiss goaded him. “Get that mind ticking. Sisters. Think _sisters_. You have to know something.”

“There were seven demons driven out of Mary Magdalene in the New Testament,” Cas added.

“Not sisters.” Reid shook his head slowly. “And you ascertained that they couldn’t be demons or the tattoo Sam wore would have stopped his possession. There’s Seven Mothers in Hindu faith, but they’re not sisters either. The Seven Pleiades have myths across almost every culture, some ascribing them to demons, some angels, some… goddesses. Goddesses! Would a goddess do something like this?” He stood, cascading books and staring at Cas. “ _Could_ a goddess do this?”

Cas blinked. “A goddess could rend this earth unto ash,” he said snippily. “Of course, that’s allowing for the fact that she would be a _minor_ deity, hardly a deity at all, really…”

“Come on, Cas, we’re not having a theological pissing contest; are there other goddesses?” Dean snapped, and Cas bowed his shoulders into his trench coat and scowled.

“Yes.” Great. Now he sounded _pissed_. “But I can’t think of why any would feel the need to commit such acts. This should be _below_ them. This is _demon_ work.”

Stooping, Reid reappeared with the tiniest little book in the pile, barely twenty pages long, and Dean blinked at it. _Really?_ “The _Deivės Valdytojos_ ,” Reid announced. “Seven minor sister goddesses who spun garments from human lives. They’re Lithuanian deities, so there’s very little surviving information on them, since Lithuania converted to Christianity in 1387 and many of their pagan rituals were lost at that time. What happens to deities who are forgotten?” Now he just sounded curious, the shell-shocked expression fading and being replaced by a hungry kind of interest, looking at Cas.

“I haven’t heard of those particular deities,” Cas said. “Which means they likely faded from collective memory when their worshippers dwindled in numbers. It… could account for their perversive acts. A weakened goddess would be susceptible to disruption from malevolent forces.”

“Crowley, damnit,” Dean snarled under his breath. Cas nodded, half turning it into a shrug as he avoided committing to pointing the finger. “So, how do we gank a bunch of nut-ball goddesses then?”

All he got in return from Cas was blinking. “We do not,” he said finally, with an air of _duh_ in his tone. “I don’t have the power to challenge one goddess, let alone six of them. It would take a garrison of angels to do so.”

Prentiss had taken the book from Reid’s loose fingers and was skimming the pages. “But this says they’re not all evil,” she said, eyes flickering up to Reid and then back down to the book. “Look at this. ‘Išskalbėja: Goddess of Light who cleanses evil. Neutral good alignment. Patronized by the spirit of fire and protector of homes, Gabija.’ That doesn’t sound like someone who’d shoot you in the back for a laugh, Reid.”

“That’s because she’s not,” Reid said slowly, eyes skipping to Dean. “I… I think that’s ‘Isska’. The one who took Sam. There are two who are… sadistic. Who match the profile of the one in Hotch. ‘Metančioji: Goddess of Evil, the one who harms’ and ‘Gadintoja, the Goddess of Death. She who destroys.’ The others are all neutral or good in alignment. Swayed, maybe, by darker forces, but originally they were benign.” It was moments like that that Dean sorely missed his dad. Surely he’d have seen _something_ like this, because Dean had… nothing. Nada. No idea.

Prentiss was still reading slowly. “Nukirpeja, Goddess of Peace. She who brings order. I mean, couldn’t we work out which she is and just tell her to kick her sisters’ asses back into line? She sounds pretty straight. Or, hey, ‘Verpiančioji. Goddess who heals.’ She’s apparently the oldest, so we could just… ask?”

Dean laughed, his voice cracking. “Oh fuck, of course,” he said, throwing his arms in the air. “Why don’t we just _ask_ the crazy bitches if they’ll stop murdering folks. Sure, damn, why didn’t I think of that? Hey, why do you people even have jobs if we could just _ask_ people to stop doing bad shit, huh?”

“I mean…” Reid spoke up, biting at his lip. “That’s not… a terrible idea. But I don’t think we can ask the goddesses themselves.”

This was _ridiculous_. Fine, the feds actually helped, at least they knew what they were up against now. But now they were just being _stupid_. Ask! Dean snorted, turning his back on them. He should just get Baby, grab Cas, call Bobby… leave the two feds into their book-strewn love-nest and solve this himself. “Yeah, maybe we should call their parents, tell them to put them into time out…” he grumbled. “Come on, Cas. You two stay—”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.” Reid’s voice was firm. Dean turned, slowly, to face him. He looked calm, focused. Like he wasn’t actually tripping balls.

“Do they _have_ parents?” Cas asked, interested.

Reid shook his head. “No, not how we think of them. But they have… patrons. Stronger deities who are responsible for their conduct.”

“But if their faith is basically gone, wouldn’t even the major deities be weakened?” Prentiss asked. Her eyes were on Dean, catlike. Watching. He felt very… small… under that gaze. Like she could see right through him, and wasn’t a fan.

Cas responded, “If they were strong enough they may have become repurposed into newer faiths. Many major deities across religions are actually the same, they just take different names.”

“Fascinating,” Reid breathed, actually perking up with interest at Cas’s words. “Can you—”

“Not the time, Spence.” Emily waved the book in the air. “Alright, so this actually has some… summoning doodads for a couple of the patrons. This ‘Dievas Senelis’ guy, he’s a judge of morality and people. Why don’t we just call him up and ask him to help?”

It… wasn’t a terrible idea. Except for the fact it was completely _insane_. The patron could be worse than the goddesses they were already stuck with; the summoning spells could be complete bullshit; they could end up possessed or dead or set on fire or something…

“Sure,” Dean said, turning back to them. “I mean, might as well give it a bang, right?” _Sorry, Bobby,_ he thought, because this was the kind of reckless thing Bobby was always grumbling about him doing. _I’ll buy you a beer if I survive this to make it up to you._

 

* * *

 

Reid was teaching himself Lithuanian. Emily wasn’t even going to _begin_ questioning that. She’d just tucked him in a corner with a bottle of water and the audiotapes Cas had fetched him and left him there murmuring to himself while they set up what she privately thought of as the most B-grade summoning circle she’d ever seen. Not that she’d seen that many.

The abandoned house that Dean had found—and when this was over, she was so looking him up on the FBI’s database, because the man had way too many skills that set all of her suspicions on edge—was beginning to really look strange, what with Reid’s little self-inflicted time-out corner and the living room now bedecked in green candles and… rooster blood?

“Ew,” she said for the fifth time, and dipped the paintbrush back into the congealing bowl of blood. “Ew, ew, ew, ew. Do I even _want_ to know where you got this?”

“No,” Dean said with a smirk, right as Cas said, “From an apothecary, of course.” God, Dean was such a _jerk_. She sneered at him, just to show how much she disliked him, and painted over the chalky lines Cas had drawn on the wood to guide her. It wasn’t easy. Dean had stressed how every line had to be perfect, and blood didn’t exactly paint smoothly. It was gluggy, quick to dry, and clumped horribly as it dragged up all the dirt that was embedded in the floorboards.

“Okay, so basically, we chant some bullshit about wanting to know our worth and this guy pops up and tells us?” Dean looked doubtful. “I dunno. This seems… easy. I don’t trust easy. I don’t even know if this circle will hold him if he decides to get all stabby on us.”

“It won’t,” Cas muttered from the other side of the room, frowning at it. “Let us hope he doesn’t realise that.”

Emily lifted the brush, examining the circle. “I think it’s done,” she said, and Dean checked his side, nodding. “Alright. What now?”

Reid coughed softly. “Now, we summon a god,” he said, with a weak grin, and walked to the circle with his notes in his hand and earphones still hanging from his neck. “I… I have to stand inside the circle.”

Nope. Noooope. Not happening.

“Bull-fucking-shit you do,” she snapped, stepping forward and almost toppling the bowl of yuck. “What if you end up all possessed?”

“That,” began Cas slowly, “may be the point. This is an old god, with very few who still believe in him. He may not be able to assume corporal form. He will need a… vessel.”

“No.” She folded her arms. Reid look sheepish and determined all at once. The self-sacrificing little _shit-bag_. He would too. For his team, Reid would set himself on fire in a heartbeat. “It’s not happening. We don’t even know how to get these guys _out_ of their vessels. And I swear to…” She almost said god, but it felt a little perverse, considering the circumstances. “I’m not letting that happen to you, Spencer. I’ll do it. I’ve already been possessed once. Maybe he can… I don’t know. Tell us more from the one who tried to take me.” Reid was going to argue, she could tell, so she stepped into the circle. There. Now, if they wanted her out, they’d have to drag her out. And _that_ would almost certainly smudge their paintwork. But that wouldn’t stop him from trying, so she got cruel.

It was always easiest to hurt those she loved the most.

“He’s a judger of men, Spencer,” she said, and made sure her voice was cool and expressionless. “Do you really want him judging you?” And he paled. She could see it in his eyes: Hankel, the drugs, every failure he heaped onto his shoulders and assumed that he was less because of them. It hurt so fucking bad to hurt him like that, but he stepped back. If there was one thing Spencer Reid was afraid of, it wasn’t the dark.

It was his own self-worth.

“Summon away,” she said weakly, and looked at Dean while it happened because she couldn’t look at Reid and the hurt/worry in his eyes and the waver in his voice. Dean met her gaze without breaking it. He looked calm. She clung to that.

Her ears couldn’t pick up one word from another in the halting, unfamiliar dialect Reid was stumbling over, so she had no idea what he was saying, how far through he was, or if she should be feeling anything other than cold, scared, and a little unwell. Outside, the storm was finally kicking up after two days of fuck-assing around, beating a steady patter of rain against the walls and windows and making her hands ache with the cold. The air smelled of candle smoke, mould, and rotting wood. The faintest hint of sweat under that from them. It was getting colder. Reid stammered. Eyes widening, she kept staring at Dean because _now_ she was terrified. There was something coming. Something there.

Something in the circle behind her.

Dean didn’t look away. “It’s okay,” he said softly, so softly, and stepped close enough that his toes touched the line. “We won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.” Something touched her shoulder and she screamed. The room vanished.

She was standing in a stream. Middle of the fucking woods, middle of the day, up to her knees in gently bubbling water, her feet bare on the smooth rocks beneath the surface.

_Hello, Emily,_ whispered the stream, or something within it, and she turned to find an old man sitting on the bank with his feet in the water. Skin wizened and eyes rheumy with age, he smiled at her gently. Kindly. _I see you for who you are._

_Where am I?_ she tried to ask, but her voice was gone, taken by the trickling water around her legs. _Where are the people I was with?_

_You’re exactly where you left yourself. Some mortals find it distressing to be spoken through. I don’t like to distress those kind enough to allow me to breathe again, even if just for a short time._

She studied him. He threaded his fingers together, elbows on his knees, and leaned forward as though waiting for her to speak. _If you can see me for who I am, who am I?_ she asked, feeling braver than what she actually was. This was insane. Ballsfuckingly insane, and they were all going to need _so much_ therapy.

_A woman who grieves the child within. A lonely human. A friend who will hurt those around her more than they have ever been hurt. You, Emily Prentiss, will one day, years from now but not so many, be dead. Killed at the hands of not only a man you once begrudgingly loved, but also at the lips and lies of those you trust the most. This I can see because it is innately a part of who you are. The one who is lost, and found once more._

Okay. Yep. Bucket-loads of therapy.

_Can you tell me what will happen **now**? _ she snapped, anger clouding her voice and churning the water. _Not in some distant future. How do we get my team back? How do we fix **this**?_

Those eyes studied her and she felt small and alone, the stream somehow huge around her, so huge she felt she’d never reach the bank no matter how long she waded, despite being able to reach it if she leaned forward and stretched her arm out.

_I cannot see that. That is not a part of you. I am no future teller. But I am grieved that my compatriots have caused so much disturbance on the mortal coil where they have no place to be anymore. Something has twisted them. I dislike this. I will help you. But I cannot walk the land anymore, nor can most of my brethren, with notable exceptions. Each of the sisters has a patron. If you can contain the vessel containing the sister, and I do recommend one at a time, summon me within yourself. I will bring with me their patron and their judgement, and I will endeavour to ensure that your friends survive the process. I do this because I see you, and I see those you are with, and you are all **good** , Emily Prentiss. Maybe not completely. No human is. But you seek to do good, and this becomes you. My faith is with you._

Thunder boomed overhead and she sucked in a breath that rattled with the noise, tasting rain, tasting cold air. Dean stared back at her, pale and gaping. “They’re going to help us,” she stammered, and looked down at her hands. For a second, just a second, she saw wrinkles, knobbly bones, skin drawn tight over gnarled knuckles. Then it was gone, and they were her own again. Reid met her gaze when she lifted it once more, realizing that she was shaking, and he looked just as shell-shocked. Her throat hurt, like she’d been talking non-stop. Or screaming.

“Yeah, you… he… said,” Dean said, finally, breaking the awkward silence. “Well. Better get our shit together then, hey?” She nodded and stepped out of the circle.

Time to get her team back.

 

* * *

 

Horses squealed when frightened. Gaddy grinned, leaning against the sturdy fencing and leering at the whickering bay cob with his ears pressed flat against his skull and eyes rolling white. She _loved_ horses. Such strong animals but so easily frightened. Like deer that had gotten ahead of themselves. “Pretty horsy,” she crooned, and trailed her vessel’s fingers in the cool water bucket hanging from the fence for the beast to drink from. “Thirsty horsy. Come get a drink, thirsty, frightened horsy.”

“What are you doing, Gadintoja?” said Verpi from behind her, her deep voice thick with disapproval. “Leave the animals.”

“God that’s fucking weird,” said Isska. “Don’t… chirp like that. It’s gross coming from your vessel.”

Apparently, Aaron Hotchner wasn’t the kind of man who could pull off a suit _and_ the term ‘horsy’. Gaddy turned away from the panicked horse, ignoring the _clunk_ of its hoof slamming into the board behind it. “Just playing,” she pouted, sneering at Isska. “Since you won’t let me go out and hunt that _cunt_ that killed Nuki.”

“Nukirpeja chose her own death,” Verpi said, always the peacemaker. Gaddy heard water sloshing near her ear. _Thirsty horsy._ “None of us begrudge her that choice.”

“I begrudge her that choice,” Gaddy snapped, straightening and barely fighting off the urge to stomp her foot, like she was still a child. Still a petulant, whiny child, just like they expected her to be. “Without her, we are less. She was selfish. I want _payback_ for that.”

The horse screamed suddenly, staggering and falling to its knees. Gaddy watched gleefully as its sides heaved, bloodied foam dripping from its mouth. _Pretty, pretty horsy._ Exactly what the stupid woman who had evaded them would look like, if the police didn’t shoot her down like the dog she was first. _She’ll die twitching,_ she thought, casually, and sent the thought down to where her vessel’s mind glowered. _Twitching and screaming, just like your little Spencer would have._

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Verpi spat, staring at the horse with distress visible behind her thick beard. Striding past, she slipped under the boards and, to Gaddy’s eternal disgust, smoothed her hand over the horse’s cramping belly. The horse quietened. Healing. _Bitch._ “Why are you so needlessly cruel? You draw attention to us. Your little stunt back at the farm with the young agent may be the end of us yet, and you’ll have brought it down on our heads.”

“You’re reckless and juvenile,” Isska added with a sniff, despite Gaddy knowing for a fact that she didn’t give two shits about the horse or the dead agent. “Why can’t you grow up and begin acting like a member of this family?”

Like any of them cared about _family_. Nuki was dead, and did they care? They should want to destroy the woman who’d stood by and let it happen, the healthy vessel that Nuki should have _taken_. Somehow, she’d stopped Nuki. She’d let her _die_. And her family were apparently just fucking fine with that.

Well, Gaddy wasn’t.

“Hey, you lot.” Audi appeared, her face split into a grin. Metan was moments behind, limping and scowling furiously. “Just got a call from our buddy, Prentiss. She gave us her location. Sounded pretty upset.”

“Crying,” Metan added, smiling tersely. “All snot nosed and bawling. Apparently, she’s located the agent that you shot, Gaddy. Good work by the way. You killed him.”

Agony. A burst of burning agony that twisted in her guts and make her gasp and dig her fingertips into her vessel’s thighs, painfully hard. He was _tortured_ by this knowledge.

“She wants to come home.” Audi was still talking, but she looked distracted. Probably fighting with her vessel again. She was shit-awful at controlling them. Gaddy slammed down Hotchner, shutting him the fuck up in his grief. “Wants this all to be over. Poor thing…”

“Poor her?” growled Metan. “What about poor Nuki? I say she wants to come home, let’s go bring her home… in a bag alongside her precious friend. Then we go get those kids and we’re good to go.”

They all looked to Verpi. She stroked the horse, her expression serene, but Gaddy could see a hint of uncertainty there. Verpi had led them well for years untold, but ever since they’d woken up… well. She wasn’t who she used to be. She was slipping. Maybe it was time for a _new_ leader. One who didn’t cringe.

“Okay,” she said finally, nodding. “But we take her down with mercy. Remember, she was a partner to your vessels. Even in this, they would be empathetic.”

Gaddy nodded innocently when all eyes turned to her, as though _she_ was the problem here, not Verpi and Audi and their bleeding hearts.

It was definitely time for a change.

 

* * *

 

Emily hung up the burner phone with a grimace, rubbing her eye with the back of her hand. If Reid hadn’t been watching her face the whole time, he’d have sworn she was actually crying. She wasn’t though. Her eyes were dry, her face determinedly cold, and they had just put things unstoppably into motion. She’d been harsh, calling Rossi with her voice thick with misery and terror and choking out, _he’s dead, Dave. Oh my god. He died, I couldn’t stop the bleeding, and they think I did it. Please help me._

Then she’d told their teammate that their friend’s body was in the woods by the farm. Told him she was hiding in town, from the grief and the police and everything that had gone wild and confusing, and that she was scared, _so scared, please come._

Dean would reveal himself in the central business district. Three targets.

“They splintered off individually in the barn,” she said quietly, checking her gun at her hip and the one on her ankle. Reid checked his again, just for something to do. Beside them, Dean was doing the same. “They don’t hunt as a team. If we give them multiple targets, they’ll do the same here. Cas, once you’ve gotten yours far enough away, can you teleport to me? I’ll lead the one after me back here, but you have to get them into the circle long enough to call Dievas Senelis.”

Cas nodded. Outside, above the beating rain, they heard the crunch of wheels over gravel.

“Don’t get shot again?” she whispered, pleaded almost, and it was Reid’s turn to nod. “Okay. Move out, everyone. Let’s go exorcise some bitchy goddesses.”  
  



	6. Ex. 9:8-12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and **festering** boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 9:8–9_

People weren’t actually as good at recognising faces from mugshots as movies had tried to convince him. At least, that was the impression Dean was getting. After an hour twirling on his bar stool waiting for someone to go, _hey, look at that handsome man from TV over there_ , he gave up. Slipping out of the bar, he found Cas sucking down a milkshake and examining a brick wall intently.

Alrighty then.

“No one recognised me and Prentiss is about to make the call,” Dean complained, checking his watch. “Or they _did_ recognise me and no one was nice enough to tell me, so we could be surrounded right now.”

They both looked around. The street was… empty.

“Did you ensure that your face was as similar to the photo they used as possible?” Cas suggested. “Perhaps stand by the television?” That… wasn’t a terrible idea.

“Give me a sec,” Dean told him, ducking back into the bar, pressing two fingers to his lips and whistling. The chatter dropped to a dull rumble, and heads swung around to stare at him. “Yo,” Dean began, waving awkwardly at them. “I’m Dean Winchester. Anyone in here a cop?”

Silence. The bartender raised an eyebrow. Goddamnit, did no one in this shithouse town even bother watching the six o’clock news?

“So, I totally killed a dude,” Dean tried, and everyone looked at each other. The bartender reached under the counter. Settling a hand on the door, Dean grinned. That could be reaching for a phone or a silent alarm, and hopefully not a shotgun, but hey. Attention gotten. Now to seal the deal. “Oh, and this is a gun.” He flashed the one at his hip, ducked just in case, and bolted out of the bar.

“Did you stand by the television?” Cas asked, chewing on the straw. From back inside the bar, Dean could hear shouting.

“Yup, now we might want to…” A cop car pulled around the corner, whooping when it saw them. “Run!” If the cops were there, their demon buddies wouldn’t be far behind. Bolting around the corner, Cas grabbed his arm and suddenly they weren’t in the piss-stinking alley anymore, but in the just as piss-stinking bathroom of the hovel they’d been hiding out in.

“Right, got their attention,” Dean announced, striding out into the living room and finding Prentiss and Reid both crouched by the window, weapons ready. “That should even their numbers out a little.”

Prentiss nodded once, jerking her chin towards the window. Outside, two black SUVs rolled past slowly. “Gave them an address up the street, told them I’d meet them there,” she said softly. “You ready? We only want one back here. Reid, sit your ass down and don’t move. We need you here to do the… weird bit.”

One of the SUVs suddenly peeled away. Dean bet they’d just got an interesting call from the local bar.

“Ready.”

 

* * *

 

“Where are they going?” Audi murmured, watching the SUV with Sergė and Isska pull away suddenly.

“Who gives a shit?” Metan snapped, hands clenched tightly in her lap and skin glistening with sweat. Her vessel was in a state. Audi eyed her, concerned by the pinched look on her face. She was clearly in pain, terrible pain.

“Verpi will heal you if you let her,” she said. Deep inside their mind, she felt her own vessel worrying, his considerable first aid knowledge throwing up worst case after worst case scenario. _Stop, you’re stressing us out,_ she sent to him, feeling something in their chest writhe and knot unhappily.

_That is absolutely the intention,_ he sent back angrily, and she huffed and shoved him away. There was movement up the road. Audi narrowed her eyes, seeing a flicker of white on dark blue darting around a corner of a ratty old house. FBI vest.

There she was.

“Verpi can go fuck herself,” Metan growled, and her eyes were on the corner too. “Let’s go hunt ourselves a pretty fed, sister.”

_Lay a hand on her and you’ll regret it,_ whispered Audi’s vessel, his voice low and with no trace of his usual biting humour. _I’ll make sure we both burn._

Audi ignored him, slipping from the SUV and checking her weapon, checking where her sister was, before leading the way into the shadows. They were hunters, they’d always been hunters. Her and Metan… unstoppable. Inseparable. They didn’t need the other five.

They’d pull their prey down together. Just like they always had.

Leaping a low wire fence, their feet were swift and soundless on the damp grass as the rain abated momentarily, leaving the world gloomy and dim despite the afternoon hour. The storm seemed to have washed all the colour from the world, all the noise, leaving them alone except for the soft rasp of Metan’s breath behind them and the whispering _shhssh_ of the lawn beneath them. They rounded the corner. Carefully. Into an empty backyard, piled with rotting wood planks and broken planters. A shed door hung open, waving in the wind. Within, something creaked. In the shadows of the shed, a pale oval flickered past the grimy window. Like a mouse, she hid.

Like cats, they approached.

A clatter sounded out; a loud, shocking noise in the aftermath of the storm. It wasn’t from the shed. It was from the house.

She wasn’t alone.

“There are two,” Metan murmured, close enough behind Audi that she could feel the heat radiating from her struggling vessel. “Which do we bring down first?”

Audi watched the shed. Her vessel was quiet, but he was…confused. His memories of this woman, this Prentiss… she wouldn’t corner herself. She was far too good, far too canny.

“We split up,” she said, just loud enough that a carefully listening ear could get the gist of what she spoke of, and then she glanced at Metan. Humans were so pathetic. Their reliance on words was pathetic. _We split up,_ her mouth said, but she smiled with her teeth bared and that said _you have my back._

“Of course,” Metan said with a cocky grin, and strode off casually towards the house. As soon as she was out of sight of the shed, she crouched, moving close to the ground, slipping easily through the debris until she was sliding behind it. Audi approached the front. They’d deal with the mouse inside the dwelling as soon as they’d quietened this one down. Their sisters wouldn’t have been so clever. Their sisters would have separated, hunted alone, never understanding that it was better to snap the neck of the bird in your hand rather than dream about the death of the one in the bush…

_You bitch_ , snarled her vessel, and then _lurched_. Audi missed a step, staggering, and her foot hit a broken pane of glass on the weed-strewn path, cracking it loudly. The sound echoed. There was a _crunch_ and a yelp from behind the shed.

_Nice try,_ Audi said, shaken despite herself, _sounds like we got her anyway._

And she was focused on losing control, on that moment when her vessel had struck back, so the wooden pole Prentiss swung at her impacted solidly against her chest, sending her sprawling back into the dust with an _oomph_. Her vessel laughed as they wheezed, and the fed burst out of the shed doorway, hurtling over the top of them, narrowly avoiding Metan’s grasping fingers as she lunged at her from inside the shed.

Audi grabbed wildly, their fingers _just_ catching the woman’s ankle and bringing her down hard on her hip. She rolled in her grip, kicking, her face determined. “Fuck,” she gasped, once, and then, “Cas!”

The back door burst open, the man from the farm coming out firing. Metan threw herself back into the shelter of a shed, leftover reflexes from the body she controlled. Audi raised her hand ready to rip the gun from his hands. Another man popped into existence next to her and Prentiss, crouching with one swift movement and grabbing both their wrists.

No.

Not a man at all.

“My apologies,” he said, and the filthy yard vanished to be replaced with a filthy house. Audi blinked. For once, her vessel was faster at processing what she was looking at than she was.

_Reid!_ he cried, and the relief was overwhelming, hammering even _her_. The man, the man who should be _dead_ , ignored them, his eyes locked on a book and droning on and on and on in a language that whirled in her brain and made her thoughts grind to a halt.

She… she knew this language.

Some part of her knew it.

Arms around her shoulders, dragging her up, and she couldn’t stop listening to those words, the inflection, the meaning behind it all, despite not really being consciously sure of any of it. “Come on, Dave,” Prentiss whispered, and Audi’s vessel took their mouth and said, “Do it, Emily. Do what you need.”

_What?_ Audi thought, blinking. She looked at the woman, and an old man looked back. Around their feet, a circle surged.

She felt water pressing against their knees. The voice droned on.

From faraway, Metan screamed in rage.

_You were my favourite, little weaver,_ said Dievas Senelis, moving into her wavering vision with his hands interlocked with those of two women who glowed so fiercely Audi couldn’t look away. _And look what someone has made of you. Aušrinė, retrieve her please._

One of the women stepped forward. Audi knew her. She brought with her the cool bite of morning, the clean wash of the dawn sun, the weakly winking light of a star about to sleep. _The morning star_ , Audi thought dully, and held out her hand, an automatic reflex. It was her hand she held out. Her hand, almost unfamiliar. Almost forgotten. Thin and young, too large for the narrow wrist attached. The hand of a girl on the cusp of growing.

_Oh._

_I remember._

Their hands touched.

 

* * *

 

Emily opened her eyes, and Reid was actually putting up a somewhat decent fight against the infuriated Morgan. A somewhat decent fight, in this case, meaning that he was ducking and weaving like he was born to dance, since every single one of them knew that if Morgan’s blows actually landed, Reid wouldn’t be getting back up for round two.

Rossi was crumpled on the ground at her feet, folded grossly over himself, discarded and forgotten, and she couldn’t breathe for the fear of that sight.

Reid or Rossi?

Morgan solved it by landing a blow. His foot lashed out and Reid went down with a bark of shock, managing to smack the wall solidly with his shoulder instead of his head as he went down. Emily leapt up, leapt forward, and Morgan went to slam the heel of his boot down on Reid’s unprotected nose.

And stopped.

The moment lingered. It held, as though they’d all taken a breath, and then she hit him from the side and they both went down. For a split second as they fell, he looked at her and Morgan looked back. Not the monster riding him.

Her friend.

Then his eyes turned black and she was flying. Tossed boldly through the air, desperately trying to tuck all breakable limbs in before she hit the wall with a meaty _smack_ that reverberated through all her bones and muscles and promised so much fucking pain when the shock wore off. She lay on the ground, stunned, a chair leg digging into her back and not entirely sure what way was up or down or left or sideways anymore, and Morgan loomed overhead.

“You are,” he hissed, slow and dangerous, and pressed his boot to her throat. “A serious pain in my ass. _Undo it.”_ The boot pressed down. She heard her air exhaling with a _ssssss_. She couldn’t inhale. “Bring her back _now_ , or I’ll cut you open like a squealing pig.”

It was weirdly disconnecting. She could _feel_ her hands scrabbling at his ankle, feel her legs kicking at the floor, feel her lungs screaming and her heart staggering in her chest. Her head lolled, and she blinked black dots from her eyes and saw Reid pushing himself up onto his knees, mouth set in a grim line and blood sluggishly trickling down his forehead. Saw the gun in his hands. Saw the uneven way he swayed, although that might have been her, or maybe they’d both been knocked a little stupider.

Cas didn’t say a word. Dean, probably, would have stormed in there and started quipping. Cas just appeared, coat tattered and just as bloodied as the rest of them, and grabbed Morgan’s shoulder. White light splintered her eyesight, her world, and she gasped as the boot vanished, choking, throat burning and reeling. The white light vanished.

A crack. Cas hitting the wall. He got back up, but she was already looking away from them, crawling towards the circle. Just touch it.

Just a finger.

“Reid,” she rasped, her voice crushed out of her, and he was staring at Cas. “Reid!”

That time worked. His head snapped around, eyes unfocused, and opened his mouth. She brought her hand down on the circle. _Now!_ she tried to scream, but choked on it.

He heard her anyway and started chanting.

 

* * *

 

It was exceedingly uncomfortable to remain in the room when the pagan deities stepped within it. Cas felt their power lapping at his, wild and unfamiliar, and it was hugely disconcerting. As though he stood on the brink of some precipice and from far below something watched him.

At some point, Dean had moved into the room, silent as the wordless pagan goddess took away the once-proud lesser goddess from within the body of the darker-skinned FBI agent, leaving him prone on the floor. The power faded. Once again, the spectre of the old man inhabiting the Agent Emily Prentiss receded, leaving her young and unblemished again. Her eyes shuttered closed, for just a moment, and he frowned as he sensed the toll allowing her body to be used like this was having upon her.

But there was no time to worry. Dievas Senelis had promised that the humans they retrieved from the goddesses’ holds would be alive once saved, and they were, but they would not remain that way for long. One man was bleeding considerably from a wound in his hip. The older man was healthy and strong but his age had done him a great disservice as the goddess within him had pushed him beyond his limits. Cas could hear a wet rattle to his breath, his lips tinged blue. When he knelt beside them to place a hand upon the older man’s brow, he could feel sickness bubbling within. Sickness allowed to take hold by exhaustion and hunger.

The goddesses clearly did not have the same ability to sustain their vessels as he did, nor did they seem to be aware of the need to. Their bodies hungered, thirsted, tired. But when he tried to heal them, his own powers wavered, distorted by the crippling damage the goddess he’d fought with had inflicted on his very self.

“They require more healing than I can manage in one attempt,” Cas said, looking up and blinking as his head reeled. His own body ached terribly, his reserves drained. It had taken a concerning toll on him restraining the goddesses’ powers even just enough to stop them from rending his companions in two with a single thought. _You require my services as well,_ he realized as he studied Dean and saw the way his friend was breathing shallowly and wincing with every movement. He had been hurled through a fence by the furious Metančioji while Cas had been absent bringing Audėja to the circle. He knew their names now, for he had recognised their patrons. The morning and the evening star. They went by many names, but they were still familiar to him.

“But you can help them, right?” wheezed Agent Prentiss, her voice husky. Her throat was filthy, red and swollen beneath the grime left by the boot that had attempted to crush the life from it, and it would bruise terribly. Cas glanced at Dr. Agent Reid. He, also, looked haggard. They may have regained two of the possessed agents, but they had paid dearly for it. Another altercation anytime soon would be highly unwise.

“I can,” Cas promised her. “But not now. I can stabilize them, but I need rest to regain my strength. As do we all.”

“Do you have enough juice to get us somewhere safe?” Dean croaked, pressing a hand to his stomach and closing his eyes, just for a moment. A moment too long. Cas furrowed his brow with concern. If _Dean_ was suggesting that they retreat to recuperate, he must be injured. Especially with Sam still in the goddesses’ clutches.

A car sounded up the street. It might have been nothing, but Cas rarely trusted luck. Dean limped to the window, using his gun to nudge the filmy curtain out of the way, and then groaned. “We’ve got visitors,” he said. “Cas, it’s now or never, man.”

Cas nodded. Where was somewhere safe? He rested one hand on each one of the unconscious agents. “Hold on,” he urged the others, feeling them reach out and grab him. Somewhere safe…

Well. There was really only one place.

He stepped away and took them with him.

 

* * *

 

There was no body in the woods. How _dare_ they trick them. How dare they. Inside her mind, she felt her vessel’s interest pique. _There’s no body,_ he repeated, softly, and then louder. _He’s not dead. He’s not dead!_ He was joyous. Celebrating.

He thought that they had a chance.

Gaddy snarled, spinning on her heel and finding herself face to face with Verpi, who examined her critically. “They fucking tricked us!” she shouted, her voice deep and furious and if Verpi was smart, she should have feared her then. However, she didn’t flinch. “Where are the others?”

“Calm down,” Verpi said, looking supremely unconcerned. “Whatever they’re trying to do, it’s futile. They cannot beat us. They are too few, too weak, too scattered. The man is injured. Metan assures us that the woman is too. They _will_ succumb… without further violence, Gadintoja, and that’s an order.”

A sneer tugged at the corners of Gaddy’s lips. “Are you ordering me?” she crooned, stepping closer. Verpi’s forehead furrowed, eyes vanishing under bushy eyebrows as she scowled warningly. “Do you forget who holds the leader of this little group? They listen to _me_ , sister. I am their chief. You are… a weak civilian… and you haven’t yet regained full use of your powers.”

It was a threat. Verpi said nothing.

Clever, for once.

The cell Gaddy had been given to replace the one Isska had fried back at the farm rang shrilly. She jumped, still unused to the shrill howl of it, before answering with a barked, “Hotchner.”

Yes. She wore this skin well. Inside her, he seethed.

“Gaddy, we have a problem.” Sergė sounded stressed. That was concerning. Sergė never let herself worry about things that someone else could deal with. But right now, she sounded worried. Worried and… upset. “It’s Audi and Metan.”

Gaddy went cold.

_You underestimated my team,_ whispered the man inside her, his voice muted by her power but no less threatening. _They’re coming for you._

“Give me that,” said a sharp voice, and the line crackled as the cell on the other end swapped hands. Isska’s voice sounded, “Gaddy, give me to Verpi. Now.”

“Verpi’s not here,” Gaddy lied, and Verpi raised an eyebrow but still said nothing. Pacifist. “What happened?”

“Well, where the fuck is she? This isn’t time to be screwing around like a child; Audi and Metan have been exorcised. They’re gone, Gaddy, you daft bitch, they’re gone just like Nuki. We’re all that’s left. Are you going to take this seriously now?”

“How are they gone?” Gaddy gasped, and now Verpi reacted. She didn’t ask, just snatched the phone from Gaddy’s ear and pressed it to her own, striding away and leaving Gaddy alone in the middle of the woods. They’d taken them. Their sisters. The only two who ever took Gaddy seriously. The only ones that ever had her back…

Gaddy gritted her teeth and waited, ignoring the burning behind her eyes. She was _not_ upset.

Eventually, Verpi came back. The storm was brewing again, the sky darkening to a grey-blue colour that boded ill for their drive back to town.

“Are we still approaching this passively?” she said, shouting to be heard over the biting wind. “Or can we do this my way?”

Verpi wasn’t as composed as Gaddy. Her eyes were red, her mouth tight. She’d cried. _Weak._ “What do you propose?” she asked, and sounded tired, so tired Gaddy almost felt sorry for her.

Almost.

She took the cell back, still warm from her sister’s palm, and stared at the display. “Metan and Audi had phones on them, yes?” she asked, scrubbing a spot of rain from the screen and scrolling down the contacts. “They would have put up a fight. Their vessels would likely have been destroyed by the act of dispelling them. The agents remaining will be injured, tired, likely mourning. They won’t be thinking.” Horror that wasn’t hers resonated through her chest as her thumb paused on a name. _P. Garcia._

“So? What are you suggesting?”

Gaddy pressed the button and brought the phone to her ear. “Let’s turn their world against them,” she said, and smiled as the line connected. “Garcia, I need your help. Please.”


	7. Ex. 9:13-35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst **storm** in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 9:13–24_

It had not been easy to talk their way into requisitioning the jet to take them to South Dakota, of all places, but Sergė had managed it. It helped that Jennifer Jareau was apparently a Class-A kiss-ass with a contact book positively brimming with opportunities for wheedling her way into any situation.

_You’re a useful, pretty little thing, my lovely_ , Sergė assured her stressful little vessel, and Jennifer just roiled angrily in her tight little huddle at the back of the mind that she used to control. _I’m very glad I got you and not the old man._ But now, because her life was bullshit and her sisters were just as bullshit, she was sitting in the rain shivering that pretty little ass right off because her sisters could never come to a freaking conclusion on anything.

“Why are we here?” Isska was whining, pacing with her stupid hair plastering itself to her forehead. “This is dangerous. They _teleported_ to South Dakota. Teleported! They have something helping them, Verpi, and we’re too few, too weak. Is this worth our lives?”

Verpi was stately. Standing unblinking in the torrential downpour with her silhouette oddly outlined by the blue glow of a streetlight behind her, rain misting as it struck her. It didn’t seem to faze her at all. Sergė envied that, and shrunk back further into the dubious protection of the burnt out car she was hunkering in.

“I believe Isska is correct,” Verpi said, turning her head to examine the house they watched. Within it, they could all feel some tremendous force; some power born from another world. “There is something with them that I do not wish to tackle without the benefit of our link. Until our vessels are connected, we are too disorganized. And with our sisters’ expulsion from this world, we must be more careful. I don’t wish to lose anyone else.” Her eyes flickered to the dark form of Gaddy squatting on the gravel, expressionless, but Sergė knew that look. _Not even you_ , it said, disapproving, and Sergė sighed.

_The things we do for family, y’know?_ she said woefully to her vessel. _Oh come on, Jennifer, darling, we can be friends. I’m here for the long haul after all. Ignoring me isn’t going to do you any good._

But the woman didn’t answer.

Bitch.

“I’m not leaving until I have at least one of them broken and bleeding under my boot,” Gaddy spat, her face twisting, and that was a look Sergė had seen somewhere else, a long time ago, just out of memory. No matter how much she tried to pinpoint the recollection, it evaded her. “Whatever they have helping them, I’ll crush that too. They’re mortal and weak and they took our sisters from us. You’re all so fucking pathetic you’d let them get away with that.”

Unfair. Sergė wanted revenge just as much as the next sister. Well, maybe not quite so much as Gaddy, who she was basically next to, but at least as much as Isska. Verpi probably didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“And we’re not going in there,” Verpi said, chin jutted out stubbornly, and Sergė couldn’t breathe for the tension of that moment. “That’s final. Will you follow me, sister, or is this the moment we part ways?” The silence strengthened, despite being broken by the rain thundering against the wind-blasted car yard, producing an unearthly racket of rattling metal and water on glass and steel.

“I’m not leaving,” Gaddy finally said, voice venomous, and Sergė sighed again. _Oh little sister, why must you be so trying,_ she thought, rolling her eyes. _Is your sister so trying?_ The vessel ignored her, so Sergė flickered through the memories that sparked at the mention of _sister. Oh, your sister is dead. You know our pain then._

Pity. The idea of Verpi in a child’s body was… disconcerting. The fact that Sergė was going to have to play Mother to either Isska or Verpi was an unhappy one. _I hope your brat is at least toilet trained_ , she added, absently, and ignored the furious slashing anger that lashed out at that. The idea that _Gaddy_ , of all people, was going to be playing Daddy… well, maybe Sergė should take on both the kids. It’s not like they’d _really_ be children anyway. Not anymore.

Of course, they could always discount Jack Hotchner… _I wouldn’t mind taking orders from your husband,_ she sent. No matter how much she chattered, Jennifer obtusely ignored her. Rude. _He’s handsome. And that **accent** , yum. We can play happy families! If Gaddy has her heart on being Daddy, maybe it will be fun to bring the little Jackie along as well. See how a human thinks. Lucky kid, getting so many aunts. Do you think he’d like that? I think he would._

“Sergėtoja, come along,” Verpi was saying, walking away, and like a faithful dog, Isska followed. Sergė sighed once more, smiled at Gaddy, and trailed after her sisters. Verpi called back, “We have until this storm breaks before we’re going back to DC, Gadintoja. Your vessels’ absences will be noted soon, and we must take the children before then. If you do not meet us, we will assume that we now walk different paths. Do not make us make that choice, little sister.”

Oh, this was dumb. Sergė followed a little further, trying to avoid the puddles, before skidding to a stop. Isska glanced back at her, face worried, and Verpi ignored them both. Like a scolded cat, her feelings were hurt. No doubt she just wanted to slink back somewhere quiet to lick the shame away. Tsk.

“Maybe I should stay and keep an eye on her,” Sergė suggested, glancing back into the shadowed yard. Midnight was _not_ kind to the décor of this place… what décor it had. “You know. Make sure she doesn’t do something dumb… something _Gaddy-ish._ ”

Isska bit at her lip, eyes flickering from Sergė to Verpi’s retreating back. “That might be a good idea,” she said finally, shoving a clump of sodden hair out of her eyes. “You always did have the most influence over her… she just won’t listen to the rest of us. You’ll be careful though?”

“I’m always careful,” Sergė said, mostly truthfully. She’d hate to dent this vessel more than it had already been dented. “See you in a few hours. Toodles!” When she made her way back to the car she’d been sheltering in, she found that her job had already become infinitely more complicated.

Gaddy was gone.

 

* * *

 

Weirdly, it was that moment that it hit. Not the night before when it had happened, not this morning when Reid had pissed off with the car that Dean had had to leave behind _again,_ not even this afternoon when they’d ended up ganking two demon-goddesses, and neither of them the one that had Sam. Nah. It wasn’t any of those moments, not when the adrenaline was still pumping and he was focused, ready to face down his death for the millionth time and still come out charming.

It was now.

Slumped on Bobby’s couch with ice packs on his probably fucking fractured ribs and Bobby himself hovering over him, interspersing a blistering lecture on just why and how and when Dean was an ‘idjit’ (because he was, everything he did, and all the time) with the occasional, “Breathe deeply I said, damnit, or you’ll end up sick,” this was the moment he really missed his brother.

_Stay strong, Sammy,_ Dean thought, closing his eyes for a moment to ride out another wave of sharp tinged pain as he breathed, _We’re coming soon._

When he opened them, Bobby was quiet, his mouth a thin line, eyes roving over the other inhabitants of the room. They’d laid the two still unconscious agents out in the next room, visible through the open doors, and Dean could tell Bobby was worrying over them. Neither looked good. Cas had done what he could and then promptly keeled over. He was currently out cold on the floor in front of the couch with a blanket over him, courtesy of Bobby, and the skinny-ass FBI slash car-jacker keeping a wary eye on him. If Dean didn’t know that the man was the worst kind of person, he’d have almost sworn he was worried.

Or just looking for a seat closest to the one of Bobby’s bookshelves, which he was working through at an alarming rate despite the deepening hollows under his eyes giving up how exhausted he must have been by that point. Getting shot and then healed and then thrown into a wall after exorcising a couple of crazy goddesses was a tiring day for anyone, but especially dweeby little carjackers who didn’t look like they knew what a good meal looked like.

But Dean couldn’t really be mad at him, since on the same couch that Reid had his skinny ass perched on was the absolutely one-hundred percent knocked-the-fuck-out Prentiss, and she was just as stunning with her mouth slipped open in sleep and snoring softly as she was conscious and glaring. Not that Dean could get a close look because Reid was like a really ratty guard dog, and as soon as Dean even groaned in that direction, he stiffened, his hand drifting from the pages of the book he was skimming over down to his hip where his gun sat once more.

It was exactly what Dean would have done, were their situations reversed, and it was weirdly comforting to know they had that in common. Even if he was a little jealous that it was the king of dorks who was snuggled up close to the sleeping Prentiss and not… well, he wasn’t jealous. Not at all. Not even when she woke up just enough to grumble and tug the blanket over Reid as well before falling back almost instantly into sleep. Well, maybe he was jealous, a little, but not for the reason he knew Sam would accuse him of.

“Only time I ever sleep that deeply is when I’m drunk,” he complained to Bobby, and Bobby raised an eyebrow and his beer at the same time.

“Or when Sam’s got your back,” he replied pertly. “That’s what family does, Dean.”

Dean nodded, thought of his brother, and closed his eyes to wait out the storm.

 

* * *

 

There was a not-so-small part of Morgan that kind of hoped that the pain he was feeling right now was the kind of pain that meant he wasn’t ever gonna wake up. He wasn’t ashamed of feeling like that. Or maybe a little ashamed because his mom didn’t raise him to quit, but his mom also didn’t raise him to beat the crap out of his teammate or to shoot at them or to kick the man he thought of as a little brother into a fucking wall.

Yeah. He remembered it all.

But still, he woke up. And he tensed. And he waited for that cruel voice to sneer at him and move his body, warp his mind, force him to hurt those he loved.

It never came. He could hear wind rattling the windows, the sound of pages being turned, the hum of voices. A quiet, serene kind of scene. There was a burning at his hip, but not the agonising kind of burning that had almost brought him to his knees earlier. It was the healing kind of burning, the kind that came right as he was getting good enough to start testing the muscle again, working it out. Stretching limits.

He opened his eyes and Rossi was next to him. Out cold, his face horribly grey, the skin loose. He looked… sick. Sick and old and hurt and Morgan swallowed and opened his mouth, as though to call for help. Then stopped. He didn’t know where he was. All he knew was that _he_ was himself again, but there was no guarantee Rossi was, or that they were…

“Morgan,” said Reid, and crouched next to him with a wince. There was a remarkably vivid bruise coming up on his temple that had Morgan immediately running through the steps of a concussion test in his mind, as though they were in the field and the kid had simply clobbered his head on a tree-branch instead of the end of his teammate’s fist. “Hey. You okay?”

What a question.

But he couldn’t answer anything other than what he answered, because to do so would be a betrayal. Reid was looking at him like he needed looking after, and maybe he did because he knew he hadn’t come to terms with what had happened yet, but it wasn’t going to be Reid doing the looking after. That wasn’t how they worked. The big brother protected the little one, that was how it worked. So he lied.

“Yeah,” he croaked, and coughed around a painfully dry throat. A water-bottle was held out to him tentatively, and he took it gratefully and tried not to wince as Reid flinched slightly at the movement. “I’m good, kid. You?”

A weak smile was his answer. “Been better,” Reid murmured, and looked at Rossi, concern creasing his forehead and deepening the shadows under his eyes. Kid looked fucked. He needed a sleep, needed medical attention, a good meal, a fuckton of therapy…

Something was buzzing in Morgan’s trouser pocket. It was what had finally dragged him out of the hazy nothingness of the dreamless sleep he’d been enjoying. His cell. Groaning, he stiffly reached down and tugged the cell out, holding it flat in his palm. _Babygirl ;)_ was flashing across the screen. Garcia had programmed it in.

Ah shit.

He looked up at Reid, noting his wide eyes and harried expression. “Can she track that?” he asked, and for a wild, weary moment Morgan though, _well, duh?_ Then he realized.

He was here, Rossi was here… and that was it. Which meant that…

_Shit._

“Garcia, listen to me,” he said, answering with a cough and struggling to sit upright. Reid put a hand on his elbow, helping him, but skittered back out of reach as soon as he was up. Morgan stared at the oddly huge shirt he was wearing, his mind humming wearily. _Wait, weren’t you shot?_ he wondered suddenly, but didn’t have time to ask because Garcia was in a panic.

“Derek Morgan, what the frickin’ frick is going on right now, you tell me, _right now_ , because I have Hotch being really really damn weird on the other end and he’s making me track you guys down and this whole place is on _fire_ right now and I barely got away but they have people on my computers and people on your desks and everyone is saying Emily kil… everyone is _lying_ and I am _upset_ and I am _crying_ and I am scared and Derek, Derek, please, pleaseplease _pleaseplease_ —” The line devolved into snotty, hysterical sobs, the kind that he knew would be shaking her frame and catching her breath and he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this. He’d done this; caused this misery in the people he should be protecting.

Mute. He was mute. She needed him, she needed him more than she’d ever needed him before, and he’d lost all his words and his goddamn mind and he was about ten seconds away from joining her, and if she wasn’t scared now, she would be when he started bawling as well.

Reid took the cell and Morgan let him because a dazed part of his mind whispered, _she thinks he’s dead._

The cell beeped as Reid put it on speaker, sliding it onto the coffee table beside them, and said, “Penelope. It’s okay. I’m right here. We’re right here. Just breathe.”

His reply was a long, drawn out, gasping inhale. “Spencer,” she whispered, her voice cracking, and yeah. She’d thought he was dead. “Oh, baby. My baby. You’re alive. They… they… oh my god, what is going on?” Her voice muffled. She was covering her mouth. Morgan did the same, his stomach churning, and he was going to be sick. He’d done this.

“Garcia, listen to me.” Emily, and she was firm and steady and everything they needed right now because Morgan was shattering, Reid was blinking rapidly and Garcia was a mess. “What did Hotch say?”

“Emily, sweetie, is that you? Do you know there’s a warrant—”

“I’m very, very aware,” Emily cut in, crouching next to Reid. “We have to be quick. If they’re watching your computer, they’re probably only a heartbeat away from tracking your calls. What did you tell Hotch?”

Silence. “Where you are,” Garcia said, slowly, and Morgan closed his eyes. _Oh god, no. No. Give us a break. A rest. Just… let us rest._ “Sioux Falls. How… how did you get there? Derek’s cell said Georgia and then… seconds later, wham, South Dakota. I mean, we’re a talented bunch, but…”

“Okay, this is very, very serious and you have to listen to me. The fact that I’m here, with Reid and Morgan, this means you can trust me, okay? You have to trust me and only me. This isn’t going to make any sense, but please, promise us you’ll trust us.” Emily was a godsend. She was calm, somehow, and her calmness was contagious. Even over the phone, he could hear Garcia’s breathing evening out, her determination to bring them home in one piece returning despite being completely out of the loop. “Do _not_ tell Hotch or JJ anything more. They’ve been… compromised.” Garcia made a noise, but Emily didn’t let her hover on that point. “We’re going to help them and fix this, I promise. But you need to lead them away from us. Just for a little while. Can you do that?”

Garcia made a soft _ohhh_ noise that really didn’t bode well. Reid’s eyes closed, already expecting the worse. Emily patted her hip, her weapon, glancing over her shoulder towards the shuttered window and the two men watching silently from the doorway. “Uh. Problem… Hotch called me hours ago. It’s taken me this long to get through. If… if they caught the jet, they’re already there. But that’s okay, right? I mean… you’re not in danger. It’s _Hotch_. He…”

“We’ll call you back,” Emily said, hanging up suddenly, and Morgan thought distantly of snapping at her, telling her that that was _rude_ and Garcia needed them right now, but then he realized why she’d been so abrupt.

“Evening, everyone,” Hotch said, casually strolling into the living room adjourning the one they were in. Reid and Emily leapt up, guns in hand. The men by the doorway already had theirs up and aiming. “How are we all?”

The storm screamed through the front door, and they opened fire.

 

* * *

 

Her brain registered Hotch walking in moments after her mouth had, so she was already hanging up the phone and standing with her gun out before her mind clicked and went, _fuck._

Because it wasn’t Hotch. It wasn’t Hotch at all. And if seeing Morgan twisted and poisoned by the monster inside him had been horrible, this was so, so much worse. Hotch grinned as he walked in, grinned in a way he never had before, and it was a smile that said, _I eagerly await your death,_ and she’d only ever seen it on their unsubs before. He grinned as the door slammed shut behind him without him moving it, he grinned as Dean and Bobby both fired on him and none of the bullets landed, and he grinned as he threw both men through the front window with the merest flick of his palm.

And Reid, in that moment, was both very, very clever and very, very stupid. “Run!” he shouted to her, like he thought she’d listen, and then he placed himself between the advancing goddess in their colleague’s body and Rossi, who was still unconscious, still vulnerable, and they might all die here. It was clever, because he’d already worked out that they had no fucking hope. It was dumb because if he was going to die, she was going to be by his side, and that’s how it worked.

But.

“Emily,” said Morgan, and he sounded steady. She spared him a glance. He was on his knees, dragging Rossi up and over his shoulder, and he was rapidly floundering under the extra weight on his already stressed body. “I need help. I can’t get him out of here alone.”

They were both turning their backs on Reid. She heard him firing. Heard him talking, rambling, spouting some fact or some memory or something _Reid-ish_ in a desperate attempt to reach their boss, if there was anything left of him. She didn’t look back, because if she did she couldn’t leave. She took Rossi’s other arm and helped drag him towards the exit. _Hang on, Spencer,_ she thought, desperate. _I’ll come back. I’ll get them out and I’ll_ —

JJ stepped into the doorway. “Hi, Em,” she said with a shy smile. Her eyes were black. And then they were flying. Emily lost her grip on Rossi. Lost her grip on her gun. Lost her grip on what way was up or down or—

The wall. She was really beginning to resent walls.

It hurt. Oh god did it hurt. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and Reid was screaming, screaming, screaming, and she saw Cas staggering up, hands glowing, brighter, so bright. She closed her eyes. Someone else was screaming now. Maybe it was her.

It might have been her. When she moved her arm, tried to lift herself, something ground against itself within it, and then she knew it was her. JJ laughed. Emily blinked once, once again, once more time, and Hotch was holding Cas. The man was slumping. Struggling.

Losing.

He vanished.

This was it. This was how they died.

Something bumped against her and her arm moved again and she couldn’t scream this time because the pain was white-hot and breathtaking. Whatever was against it, it was warm. It was solid. It smelled of copper and burning and sweat and—

“JJ, please,” Reid whispered, and pressed back harder against her. His back. He was scooting back on his ass, cringing back from something, trying to shelter her with his body. “JJ. It’s me. It’s Spencer. I’m your friend.”

“Do you really think that’s going to work?” JJ’s voice was a sneer. Nothing like Emily had ever heard before. It made her sick to her stomach to hear now. Bile burned her throat, trickled into her mouth, and she choked wetly.

A hand touched hers. Warm and big and bony, and it wrapped tight around her fingers.

Oh god. _Don’t hold my hand,_ she gasped, or tried to. _That’s too much like giving up._

“No,” Reid said. His voice was soft. It wasn’t the only noise in the room, far from it. There was crashing. Something crackled. Something stunk of smoke. Gunfire. But his voice was the only noise that mattered to Emily right now, and she didn’t really hurt anymore. “No, I don’t think it will work. It won’t stop you. But I know JJ is in there. Listening. And this is not your fault, Jennifer. This isn’t you. Don’t blame yourself for this.”

“Shut up!” she screeched, and Reid wheezed. Emily felt it too, felt the crushing pressure that suddenly enveloped them, compressed them, their bodies helpless to fight it.

Reid panted, moaned, and kept talking.

Even now, even dying, he didn’t shut up.

“Not your fault,” he rattled, and she heard something crack. Him or her? Or the wall behind them? Who fucking knew. “Love you.”

Black. Couldn’t breathe. The noise faded, the pressure faded, but his hand was a constant.

It slackened.

And suddenly the pressure was gone. They hit the ground with an _oomph_ and Emily’s eyes snapped open. The room was gone. The room that was burning, the room filled with demons in the disguise of goddesses in the illusion of their friends…

They were in the old building. The building in Georgia. Emily stared.

If she was dead, this was the worst fucking heaven ever.

Cas staggered, his knees hitting the ground. From behind him, Morgan was buckled over Rossi, breathing heavily. “Cas?” Reid asked, his voice returning, and she’d never been so happy to hear him rasping for air before. “Are you—”

Cas vanished. A beat passed. Another.

Emily would have kept counting but everything was wobbly now, slipping away, and Reid was touching her throat which was peculiar, stop that, _hey, no means no kiddo._

_My chest hurts. Ow. Stop. Stop pushing me._

_Head hurts._

It took her another beat to realize his mouth was against hers. _Weird. His lips are soft. This is weird._

_Oh. Wait._

_Fuck._

 

* * *

 

He was extensively injured. The goddess, the one in the dark-haired man, she was destructive. Touching her had felt very much like what he imagined it would feel like to die over and over and over again without the respite of oblivion, and his body was failing from the damage it had caused. His power was failing. But he couldn’t fail. Not yet.

Dean. Dean still needed him. Bobby.

Just. A little. More.

Cas stood, seeing Dr. Agent Reid peer up at him, eyes glazed. He was also injured. The woman, Agent Prentiss, Cas could feel her life flickering. He would have to. Help. Soon.

Dean first.

He _stepped_ and it was long. It lingered. It wasn’t instant or easy and Bobby’s living room blinked in and out of existence around him several times before he felt the floor solidify beneath his feet. Problem. He was compromised. His abilities, compromised. The room stood empty. Someone cried out. Cas took a long step and—

Found Bobby. Locked in the bathroom, the door splintering. “’Bout time you showed up,” he shouted, and Cas grabbed his arm and

stepped

staggered

Bobby tripped over Agent Prentiss’s legs and almost sprawled against the wall. Cas nodded, wearily, his vision doubling and splintering. Dr. Agent Reid was…

Cas recognised what he was doing. It was a resuscitation technique. A human resuscitation technique. It was… flawed. The woman remained motionless, her heartbeat sluggish, her breathing stilled, and still the man continued breathing for her, his palms rhythmic against her chest. As Cas watched, Bobby shuffled over on his knees, taking his place at her chest, allowing the agent to move back to her mouth. It was commendable. Cas would help. But.

Dean.

He turned and found himself in Bobby’s kitchen. Bobby’s backyard. The world cracked around him. Bobby’s living room and the house where a man worked frantically to stop Death, at the same time. All at once.

Cas pulled himself together, reached for Dean, and found himself standing over him as one of the goddesses watched with interest as the last of his breath left his body. Choking him. Cas needed to stop her. He lunged, fell, crashed into them both and tumbled into the house again. Rolled into something warm and solid that moved along with him with a yelp. Reid. He’d knocked over. Reid.

He was laying against Agent Prentiss. Someone behind him shouted.

Her face was pale. She looked…

Beautiful.

It was the work of a moment to brush his fingers against her jaw, throat, chest. The hollow dip in her collarbone where underneath her heart floundered. There was a trickle of life. He touched it.

_Don’t die,_ he said, and she didn’t.

And then he didn’t know anything anymore for the longest time.

 

* * *

 

Emily lived.

Cas crashed into her, brushed his hand against her throat, and Reid almost cried out with the sweet relief of seeing her chest heave once, twice, colour returning to her lips. He’d felt it. Felt her dying under his hands and his mouth and he hadn’t been able to stop it. He knew the stats about CPR. He knew he was fighting a losing battle the moment she’d stopped breathing. But Cas wasn’t moving, Emily wasn’t recovering fast enough, and Reid was hurt, hurt plenty, but he was still the most able-bodied person in the room.

Aside from JJ.

Reid looked up and met her eyes. Those wide blue eyes and he hadn’t lied, he loved them and her and everything she meant to him, but right now they were stranger’s eyes and he wondered what he’d have to do to keep the people in this room who were relying on him safe. The moment stretched uncomfortably. He inched up onto his hands and knees, and his hands brushed the book. JJ wasn’t in the circle. She was backing away, eyes skimming the people around her, the eyes locked on her waiting to see if she was going to fight or flee, and she wasn’t in the circle… but Reid was.

He began to chant. He knew the words from memory now. Softly enough that she couldn’t hear him, the words tripping and tumbling over themselves in his mouth, quicker and quicker, and finally she realized he was talking and turned to him.

And realized what he was doing right as he finished the incantation and the circle flared around him. She ran. Ran from him, from that house, from the circle. Outside, the storm _boomed_ , the loudest yet, and the sound echoed in his head, in the room, and everything flashed white. Rain and wind blasted the dilapidated house, and now Emily was sitting up, staring at him, and a hand touched his shoulder.

_Chase her,_ said a voice, and he didn’t question, just leapt to his feet and left everyone behind.

He stepped out into a tempest and he didn’t falter. She was a hint of movement in front of him, white and blue against the storm, and he chased her down and tackled her around the waist. They hit the dirt, the mud, and he saw gravel tear her bare arms. Water drenched them, in his eyes and his mouth and his clothes, and he could barely see through the blistering torrent that whirled around them. JJ spluttered, fighting his grip, and they were in water, fighting, struggling.

“You fucking prick,” she screamed over the rain, but whatever else she said was ripped away by the storm and another bone-shattering clap of thunder. Reid was shaking convulsively, colder than he’d ever been, and still he didn’t let go. Lightning lit up the wind-blasted yard. JJ stared at him with black eyes, hatred in them, and lashed out with her open palm. He barely felt the slap, his face was so numb from cold, and her struggles were weakening.

“Help me!” he screamed, to Dievas Senelis, to Emily, to anyone who was listening. “Save her! Save her now!” Another boom, but it wasn’t thunder. JJ stilled. Her mouth gaped.

“Perkūnas,” she gasped, and he turned to find a man walking out of the storm. From the storm.

No… he _was_ the storm. The thunder was his voice, the storm clouds his eyes, and Reid had to close his own eyes because they burned from the sight, struggling to breathe as the air thickened, turned sharp and metal-cold and flavoured with ozone and the scent of lightning.

The rain whirled and screamed and shouted, _This is not your place, scolder. You will remember yourself._

The creature in JJ screamed. And then, moments later, JJ screamed.

Reid dragged her up, out of the water and the mud and into the battering wind, and wrapped his arms around her. Kneeling soaked and freezing in the filthy water as the storm whipped the world into a frenzy around them, he held her tighter than he’d ever held her before, burying his face in her shoulder to stop his eyes from aching and waiting for the storm to die.

Her chest heaved against his. They were both panting. Her hands were threaded through his shirt, nails digging into his chest from her shell-shocked grip, and her breath was hot and panicked against his cheek. Quiet. Quiet except for water trickling around them, the wind dying to a whistle, the storm fading to a whisper and then a memory.

That touch again. _Good work,_ whispered the voice, an old man’s. _Hold her close, Spencer Reid._

“Spence?” JJ whispered once, into that frightful quiet, and he lifted his head and it was _her_. “Oh, _Spence.”_

And she was crying, hugging him, soaked to the bone, and he wasn’t much better. But she was safe. She was herself. She was alive.

They were all alive.

The storm was over, and they’d survived it.


	8. Ex. 10:1-20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: 'How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow. They will cover the face of the ground so that it cannot be seen. They will **devour** what little you have left after the hail, including every tree that is growing in your fields._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 10:3–6_

Spence was a mess. There was a vivid, swollen bruise across his forehead, when he stood he staggered, and he was shaking almost convulsively. She wasn’t feeling much better, but she still felt the need to support him when he swayed, his skin ice cold against hers and stiff to the touch. When they limped back inside, Spence leading her by the hand, it was a nightmare. JJ’s memories were all over the place, her head aching, lungs heavy and wet, but she remembered snippets.

She remembered a snippet of choking the unfamiliar man slumped against a wall with his head bowed and chest heaving. She remembered the unconscious man in the tan coat touching them and _teleporting_ them here, and her brain tried to grind to a halt and make sense of that memory but really, was it that much stranger than them being possessed in the first place?

She vaguely remembered the gleeful feeling of using some kind of dark, chaotic power to crush the life from Emily and Spence. Vaguely remembered sensing exactly the point when their bodies had strained against that awful pressure and began to give way, to crack and rupture. Spencer telling her she was forgiven even as his bones ground together. JJ screaming, begging, pleading, all silently.

Emily was conscious, barely, but she wasn’t moving. JJ looked down at her and remembered what it felt like to stop her heart.

Spence took two more steps, dropped to his knees, and reached for Emily with a hand that trembled. Fumbled for her throat. She pushed his hand away, weakly, but he set his mouth in a stubborn, pale line and determinedly took her pulse anyway.

JJ remembered feeling his ribs splinter, and tasted bile.

“Woah!” the man against the wall said suddenly, surging upright and patting at his hip as though reaching for a gun. “Hey, watch out!” He was looking at her and she couldn’t find the words to tell him that she was _herself_ , so instead she just hugged her arms around her waist and stared at the mess she’d made of these people. Ones who had never meant her harm.

“Cool it, Dean,” said an older man, stepping out from the decrepit kitchen with three bottles of water in his arms. The water looked gritty, tepid, but her mouth dried at the sight of it anyway. “She’s free. Look at her. Come here, ma’am, you look frozen. Jesus, you’re soaked.”

She hadn’t moved towards him, but he walked to her anyway, expression worried. Handing her a bottle of water, he peered into her eyes. “You hurt?” he asked, gently, and to her horror she felt her eyes beginning to burn. “Hey now, don’t do that. Demons are like that, they mess you all up inside. You ask Dean. He’s gotten possessed enough times to be an expert, and ain’t no one holding that against him.”

“Jayge,” Emily rasped, struggling upright, and the man stepped aside to let JJ slide past and kneel next to her. “Come here.”

Then there were arms around her, Emily’s face pressed hot and damp against JJ’s wet shoulder, and they clung desperately to each other. It might have been a moment of weakness, a moment of shameful emotion, but JJ didn’t give two shits. She’d fucking _grieved_ these two, and now they were back and mostly okay and maybe they could move past this.

She’d grieved them…

“You were shot,” she said, turning her head to the silent Spencer, and his hand reflexively flickered up to his shoulder. “I saw you. You… fell. Wait, wait…” Memories raced, chaotic, scrambled memories, but clear enough for her to get the gist of it. “Morgan _was_ shot. I saw him, he was bleeding. Is he here? Is he okay? Where’s Rossi? I saw him on the ground?”

Spencer turned his head and she turned hers with him, seeing their two friends on the floor, unconscious. “Morgan was awake,” Spencer said, his voice thick. “I think transporting him was more than his body could tolerate. Rossi…”

“Needs to be taken to the hospital.” Their heads all turned to the speaker, the older man from before. “Look, how many of those goddesses have we taken out now? Four? There’s three left then. They’re gonna be running scared and these two aren’t gonna be any use to them. We take them to the hospital, they’ll be safe and looked after while we make our next move.”

“What is our next move? We’re all fucked, Bobby. Ain’t none of us ready to take on one goddess, let alone three.” The man against the wall closed his eyes and bumped his head twice against it, frustrated.

JJ pushed her fingers into her temples, slipping her hand down to dig her knuckles into her eyes, both to stave off the headache she could feel building and also to try and trigger a memory that was haunting her, her own voice taunting, cruel and threatening and…

_Henry._

“Henry!” she cried, lurching upright, and she saw Spence flick from exhausted to wired in one swift move. “They need vessels that are linked to us—they’re after Jack and Henry!”

“I’ll call Garcia,” Spence said, his voice sharp, and scrambled towards Rossi. “Does Rossi still have his cell? We lost Morgan’s…”

“What can she do?” Emily was saying, standing unsteadily, one hand braced against the wall. “These demons still have Hotch. She can’t stop Hotch from getting to his son. And if you ring Jessica rambling about demons, you’re the one who’s going to end up committed. JJ, Will—”

“Already on it,” JJ said, finding her own cell, ignoring the seventeen missed calls labelled _Strauss_ and hammering speed dial one. She could get Will to take Henry and run, he wouldn’t question her, but Jack… they’d have to beat them there. If they were here, in Georgia, and Hotch was still in South Dakota— _how?_ —they could beat them. Barely. But they’d—

“Jen, love. What’s wrong?” Will’s voice almost floored her. She opened her mouth, words failing her, her knees shaking at the timbre of his tone, the love audible, the goddamned familiarity of it all. As though she’d stepped back in time and it was three days ago and everything still made sense. “JJ?”

“Will, remember our promise?” she whispered, and felt Emily’s eyes on her. “That if I ever told you to take Henry and run, you’d do it? No questions?”

There was a sharp inhale on the other end of the phone. Distantly, JJ could hear Henry laughing, calling for his daddy. Her heart ached. “Yes. I remember.”

JJ met Emily’s eyes and saw the grief in them. Even if they all got out of this alive, they all knew the world wasn’t the same anymore. Wouldn’t ever be the same. The next time Henry asked if he should be scared of the dark, what the hell would she say? Instead of saying any of this, she swallowed that fear down and ignored that she might never see them again.

“I need you to run.”

 

* * *

 

That fucking angel. It had all been going _beautifully,_ then the angel had run, taken all her delicious, frightened mice with him, and Sergė had gotten caught up in the exodus… and now she was gone too and it was Gaddy’s fault.

No. No, not her fault.

_Your team’s fault,_ Gaddy snarled to her vessel and he feared her, feared her temper, and so he should because she was going to _burn_ the life out of them _._ Out of everything they fucking loved. Spencer Reid’s precious, crazy mother… dead. Jennifer Jareau’s husband; she’d make him shoot himself with his own service weapon in front of her. David Rossi had nothing but his team, so she’d save him for last. Let him see them all destroyed. Derek Morgan had a dog. A mother. Sisters. _I’ll make you take them apart piece by piece in front of him until he begs to die,_ she screamed, and her vessel was silent, mortified. And the _children._ Humans loved their children _so_ much.

She was going to be extra slow with the children.

Isska and Verpi looked up as she limped towards them. The angel had injured her vessel in minor ways, but nothing she couldn’t work through. More worrying, he’d also drained her. It had taken all of her powers and more to merely dull his. He was dangerously stronger than them… unless they linked their vessels. But with three, would it be enough to take him down?

She hoped so. He was another she wanted to burn.

“Where is Sergėtoja?” Verpi asked, her eyes wide. “Where is our sister?”

“Gone,” spat Gaddy, cruelly perhaps, but this was no time for kindness. She saw Verpi recoil, saw Isska stiffen, and knew she would have at least one ally in her quest. Isska _loved_ Sergė. Loved her like she had never loved Gaddy. “They _took_ her. I felt it. The storm itself helped them.” It had too. She’d felt it, the storm pressing down on her, trying to dull her powers. Calling to Sergė with a voice she was deaf to. It made a quiet, shattered part of Gaddy’s mind whine and whir, trying to remind her of something she’d forgotten, some thin thread of remembering.

But it was the past. Gaddy didn’t dwell in the past. She dwelled in the now and what she’d lost, and how sweet this _team_ of sycophants was going to taste once she’d taken everything from them and had them prostrate on their bellies in front of her.

“The storm?” Verpi murmured, focusing on the wrong fucking thing once more, the most _useless_ of all of them, and Isska was seething. Gaddy could feel her powers roiling, bubbling, building up in a hot rush of anger and grief that she fully intended upon making use of. “Why would a storm…”

“I want revenge,” Gaddy whispered intently, and locked her gaze on Isska’s deceptively soft brown eyes. “I want to hurt them like they’ve hurt us. How _dare_ they take our family from us. Right now, they’re _celebrating_ our sisters’ deaths. Cheering. Joyful. I want to ensure they never know joy again.” Isska swallowed. Verpi was still mute, deep in thought, looking up at the sky.

“What are you thinking?” Isska asked finally, her eyes flickering from Gaddy to Verpi, torn between them. But her hands were shaking, her mouth thin, and Gaddy knew she’d won. “We’re so few now. And they’ll turn the law against you, you know they will. We’ve lost any advantage your rank brought us.”

“They took our family,” Gaddy said, and sneered as she continued, “so we take theirs. But I can’t do it alone. I don’t want to do it alone. I want my _sisters_ by my side… please?” And she let it show, a flicker of the youth and fragility she normally hid, the traits that her sisters seemed to covet within her, and Isska crumbled. They both looked to Verpi, who looked distraught.

“We were simply going to claim the children,” she said, and Gaddy _knew_ the silly bitch wouldn’t raise a hand against the young. “I won’t condone kill—”

“But you condone them doing the same to us?” Isska said, frowning. “Audi and Metan were young. Sergė, even younger. You’re fine with them taking our youth, but you won’t retaliate? Whose side are you on here, Verpi? Are you a human or one of us?”

“One of you, but—” Verpi tried, but Gaddy stepped forward. She was taller, she noted with glee, and Verpi had to look up to meet her eyes.

“But what?” she asked coldly, seeing the confusion and dismay written across her sister’s rugged features. Something was distressing her. Good, it meant she wasn’t controlled enough to fight back. “But you’ll stand against us to protect them? Will you throw us to the hunters? How far will you go to save a couple of insignificant human beasts?”

“Something is wrong,” Verpi said, shaking her head, her hands bunched in front of her. “Something is so wrong, with us, with the world. The storm, you said the storm fought you—I _know_ why. But I’ve forgotten, we’ve all forgotten, we need to—”

“ _You_ need to remember where your loyalties lie,” Gaddy said, drawing herself to her full height and using the force of her vessel’s personality. He was a natural leader. She was pretty sure she could suggest any course of action, and so long as she said it using Aaron Hotchner’s voice, people would follow her. Isska wasn’t immune to that power. “We’re going. We’re going to make sure they remember our sisters’ names… whether you stand with us or not.”

Verpi looked to Isska. Isska looked at Gaddy. “Come on,” she said, jerking her chin towards the car they’d rented. “It’s a long drive to DC, and we can’t risk the jet.”

They walked away and left Verpi standing there alone, Gaddy in the lead.

As it should be.

 

* * *

 

There was a rage brewing within Gadintoja that had Verpiančioji worried. She was the youngest of them. The rashest. And, Verpiančioji feared, the most irreparably twisted.

Because they _were_ twisted, she knew this now. Something, at some unknowable time within the past countless centuries of hazy nothingness, had reached into their hearts and their souls and warped their very selves. What they were now was not who they had been. Verpiančioji knew this now. Had maybe known it a while.

Known it for sure when Gadintoja had mentioned the storm.

Her sisters left her and her other sisters were lost, and Verpiančioji paced and paced and tried to remember, tried to grasp the thread _(thread?)_ of memory that taunted her. Called to the fading storm, who did not answer. Called to someone, anyone, and no one replied.

She was alone… but this was not how she was meant to be.

And her sisters, this thing they planned to do, this awful, unchangeable thing. They had been terrible, truly terrible, in their short time on the mortal coil. There were the vessels they had originally destroyed. The vessels’ families. But that was done from need, from perhaps… naivety. Not like this. Not with _hate_ driving them.

“We are not who we were,” Verpiančioji murmured to the cloudy surface of a stream, glittering unevenly in the weak light. “I… I am not who I was. And I cannot allow this to happen.”

This would be the end of them. They would never recover from this deed. Perhaps Gadintoja was beyond redemption, even if Verpiančioji was successful in halting their foul plans. But Išskalbėja… no. Verpiančioji could not allow her to be dragged down to Gadintoja’s level. She was supposed to be _more._

“The laundress,” Verpiančioji said out loud, blinking and watching her vessel blink with her, sluggish, almost at the end of its strength. She would need another. She did not wish to take another. Not unless she had to. The laundress? Why had she said that? “The one who cleanses evil…”

It niggled.

_Have you forgotten so much, thread-spinner?_

She whirled, but there was no one there. The creek babbled at her, laughing at her confusion. The birds were silent, still sleeping away the storm.

_Have you forgotten me, goddess who heals?_

From above, the sun broke through, weakly warming the bared skin of her arms. She took a deep, long breath, and _listened._

_I have not forgotten you. My healer. The wisest, the most knowledgeable… the leader of the seven. Why are you not leading? Why have you failed them? Why have you failed **me?**_

The last word was barked, a roar, the rushing of a flooded creek hurtling down from the rain swept mountains.

“Tell me who you are!” she cried, turning on the creek, her power humming and burning the vessel’s skin. She healed, but it deteriorated just as fast, leaving festering boils on her fingers and palms. “Tell me! I demand it! Help me!”

_Help yourself,_ the voice sneered. _I judge you forsaken, she-who-was-once-my-goddess. Prove yourself worthy of my regard again. Right what you have wronged. Remember family._

She felt the voice fade, walking away from her. It hurt. The loss was tearing, almost visceral; she expected to look down and find her heart bleeding through her chest. “Wait! Don’t go… please.” She regretted her earlier brashness. She had never been alone, never been without her sisters… she feared it. “I require guidance. I am… lost.”

_Save the laundress… before she is judged._

And it was gone.

She was truly alone.

 

* * *

 

Reid was acting like a squirrelly little fuck. Following her around so closely that if she stopped suddenly, he’d be up her goddamn ass. “Reid, seriously, fuck off,” she snapped finally, rounding on him, and he looked _woeful_. “… Please.”

“You shouldn’t be over-exerting yourself,” he said resolutely, digging his hands into his pockets and slouching. It was a posture he took sometimes, when he was uncertain, this slumping to hide his height. Automatic. A learned response, something he’d picked up to hide himself away from people. It made her heart hurt. “You’ve probably got damaged ribs, almost certainly. Your heart would have been strained. You—”

“Reid,” she said, firmly, because if she wasn’t firm with him, he’d never learn. “I’m actually okay. I can breathe fine, which means my ribs are just dandy. My heart is fine. Here.” She grabbed his hand without thinking, dragging it out of his pocket and pressing it against her chest to where her heart beat steadily underneath, rapid with the tension of preparing for the flight to DC. “See? Alive. Still alive. Going to stay that way.”

Reid nodded once, jerkily, his fingers twitching slightly against her shirt, and then his eyes widened. Flickered down. He flushed from his cheeks to his ears, twitching his hand back and covering his mouth to hide an awkward cough. “Yes. Ah.” Lowering his hand, his gaze dropped with it, settling firmly on her shoes. “I know. I just… worry. You almost died, Em. You… did die. I felt it happen… please, just take care. I can’t see that again. I’ll do anything not to see that again…” And he fucking meant it too. They were hurtling towards another ‘Reid takes his vest off a-fucking-gain incident’, she just knew it, especially if she was in the firing line.

Damn asshole overprotective _males_. Even Reid wasn’t immune to being a shithead about this.

She changed the subject to avoid the ‘you get hurt for me and I’ll kill you myself’ retort she knew was dancing on the tip of her tongue. “Where’s Winchester and Bobby?”

“Moving Rossi and Morgan,” Reid answered stiffly, looking back up with his cheeks still tinged red. “Morgan is awake. We should go say… we won’t be able to go with them to the hospital. We’re still infamous.”

Nodding, she caught his arm, gripping his wrist, as he turned to stride away. He paused, not looking back at her, so she focused on the way his hair curled at the base of his neck, over the collar of his shirt, hiding the skin below. “Spence,” she said, intent, and now he turned his head just enough that she could examine the angular profile of his face. “Promise me you’re not going to do anything… stupid.”

He smiled. He nodded. And he said, “Em, I’m rarely stupid,” and walked away, still smiling. His ‘butter is melting in my puppy-dog mouth’ smile, and she groaned inwardly and followed.

Morgan was awake in the passenger seat of the SUV Bobby was taking him in, but barely. “Hey,” he said weakly, seeing them coming, and JJ was holding his hand. There was a tension to her features, a harried _we need to move_ and it was infecting all of them. “You guys be damn careful, okay? Garcia is gonna make me cookies for getting shot and if anyone else gets hurt, I’ll have to share. Plus, I already have the old man as a roommate…” He fell silent, looking to the backseat where Rossi was laid flat with his head pillowed on the artfully arranged Cas, both still out cold. At least they had a guarantee Cas was going to wake up…

Dean and Bobby appeared, grim-faced. “Time to go,” Bobby said. “You’re gonna be racing.”

Reid was shuffling through their bags. “Wait,” he said, looking up and not looking at Morgan, the SUV taking them away, or the possibility of the loss that was here. Kid was shit at goodbyes, or even the semblance of them. “Where’s the book?”

“I dunno man, probably in the Impala. Can’t you get it after?” Dean snapped, eyes on Cas. JJ was leaning into the backseat, her hand brushing Rossi’s forehead, pressing her lips close and whispering something to him Emily couldn’t hear. Emily stepped closer to Morgan.

“I have to make sure,” Reid was rambling, any excuse to get away before they could see how upset he was, and bolted. Emily rolled her eyes at him.

“He’s fine,” Morgan said, quietly, and squeezed her hand. “Emily… about the forest. Everything I did. It’s coming back to me and, god… I would never…”

“Hey, stop.” She shut him up by jabbing him in the ribs. “Don’t apologise. If you apologise, you’re going to make JJ feel guilty, and I don’t want to drive for ten hours with Reid and Dean bickering and JJ endlessly apologising. Save it for when you’re feeling better and I can tease you about it, okay?” A nod was her reply, then Bobby was climbing in the driver’s seat and they were out of time. Hurried goodbyes, the slam of the doors closing, and the car peeled away with their friends inside. Maybe they’d see them again. Maybe they wouldn’t.

They might not.

Emily settled her palm on her hip. But damnit, she was going to do her utmost to ensure they did. All of them. No one left behind.

JJ was rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, looking around, her breath fogging in the cool air left behind by the storm. “Where’s Reid?” she asked suddenly, and it occurred to Emily that he hadn’t come back with the book.

“Ah, _fuck_ ,” Dean said, and ran.

 

* * *

 

The book sat closed on the backseat, Reid bent over to pick it up, almost slamming his head on the roof as he straightened. “Damn,” he muttered, looking around sheepishly to make sure no one had seen his clumsiness. Distantly, he heard a car peeling away. The car.

Swallowing, he bit back the fear that seeing Morgan so injured had brought, the worry. It was crippling. He couldn’t focus through it, and he couldn’t say… anything that was even somewhat close to a goodbye. Not when…

Not at all.

“Spencer Reid,” said a voice, a female voice, and he whirled and found he wasn’t alone. Reached for his gun, but it was tugged from his hands by an invisible hand, his voice silenced when he opened his mouth to yell. “I’m sorry.”

The goddess stepped forward, the eyes of her vessel an endless black he was drowning in.

He couldn’t scream.

He couldn’t move.

He couldn’t—

 

* * *

 

“Oh no,” the blonde woman, JJ, gasped. Dean pushed past, his eyes on what she’d seen and fully aware of the two women holding loaded guns at his back. The Impala, door open to the elements.

The book, open and face-down on the ground, half in a puddle. “Would have thought he’d be more careful with his books,” he tried to joke weakly, turning back and finding Prentiss glaring at him like she wanted to shoot him right there and then.

“He is,” she snarled, and Dean could tell she was biting back at him to hide how shit-fucking scared the sight of that book had made her. He was fine with that. Whatever helped her focus. “He’s in trouble. Reid!”

“Shhh,” Dean coaxed, pacing carefully towards the car to get a better look around it. “If there’s something nasty here, we—”

“Oh, thank god,” JJ exclaimed suddenly, jogging around the car and lowering her weapon. Prentiss followed, reaching out for her arm as though to pull her back. “Spence!”

The dork was crouched over something on the side of the overgrown drive, his hands careful. A body. With almost tentative care, Dean watched as he took the pulse, shook his head, mouth downturned and hair flopping stupidly into his eyes. _Damn. Didn’t even notice someone got caught in the crossfire…_ “Who is that?” Dean asked, coming up behind the women as they slowed, guns down and tension leeching from their postures. “Where did—”

Reid looked up. Met their gazes. Dean had his gun raised in a heartbeat, Prentiss only moments behind him. JJ cried out, _oh god, Spence, no!_ Because it was Reid, but not anymore.

Dean aimed right between those black eyes and hoped to god he didn’t have to pull the trigger.

And the goddess stood and raised her hand.


	9. Ex. 10:21-29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that **darkness** will spread over Egypt— **darkness** that can be felt." So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total **darkness** covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days._
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 10:21–23_

Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever been anywhere where the atmosphere was as painfully tense as the interior of his car right now. Cuffed and silent in the backseat with his cheek against the window, the goddess-possessed agent watched him in the rear-view with black eyes and an unnervingly unwavering stare. In the front, JJ sat on her knees with the seatbelt only around her waist, her gun resting on the headrest of her seat, aimed carefully just to the right of his head. She wasn’t prepared to use it, and Dean’s fingers tensed on the wheel.

Prentiss on the other hand…

She was cross-legged in the back, her knees pulled tight to avoid touching any part of her co-worker and her face a cold, hateful mask. Back against the door behind Dean and eyes on Reid, her gun was also locked unerringly on his temple. If he made any noise or gesture they didn’t like, Dean had no doubt Baby would very suddenly be splattered with all kinds of geek-bits.

“I still say we should have left him behind,” Dean muttered, because he hated the silence and when he’d tried to put some tunes on, Prentiss had whacked the headrest. “Only thing worse than a know-it-all is a brainwashed and crazy know-it-all…”

“No,” Prentiss said, and her voice was ice. The fine hairs on the back of Dean’s neck stood up. Reid didn’t flinch, just slipped those black eyes over to examine her emptily, seemingly unaware of how furious him even acknowledging her was making her. Out of all of them, Prentiss seemed to have taken it as a personal affront that anyone had dared to take her skinny little friend. “He’s coming and we’re going to rip that fucking bitch out of him.”

“You do not know the incantation to call my patron,” Reid said, and Dean had learned to hate his usual voice over the past forty-eight hours but goddamn if he didn’t hate this new vacantly distant tone he’d taken on since getting possessed. It was somehow both know-it-all _and_ holier-than-thou and it was like nails on a goddamn chalkboard to listen to. “Dr. Reid was the only person of your group who memorised the words, and the book was damaged when I unfortunately startled him.”

“ _Don’t_ talk about him like he’s gone,” snarled Prentiss, teeth gritted and eyes wild. “Shut up, shut the _fuck_ up.” Reid would usually have shit his pants if anyone had directed that tone at him, Dean didn’t need to know the ins and outs of the guy to know that. And if his precious teammates had done it? Dude would need therapy for sure. But right then, he didn’t even flinch. Just nodded slowly and leaned his head back against the window, eyes flicking back to the rear view to study Dean.

Creepy fuck.

“Told you we should have gagged him,” Dean said, rapping his fingers on the wheel to dispel the anxious wariness that was building. “I mean, we still can. I’ll even volunteer a sock because, man, I’ve been wanting to—”

“Dievas said he wanted to help you, didn’t he?” JJ asked Prentiss, letting her gun slip again. She was really not dealing well with this. Dean didn’t overly blame her. “What if we just… ask for help? I mean, we still have the rough circle diagram… we can work it out from that, can’t we?”

“Not unless you want to run the risk of accidentally summoning the wrong god,” Dean replied. “It’s not like a phone book. You can’t just try different D. Senelises until you get the right one.”

“He will not assist in removing me,” Reid said into the window. Emily clicked her tongue, tapping the butt of her gun on her knee like a warning. Reid, stupidly, ignored her. “My acquisition of Dr. Reid’s body as a vessel was voluntary. I have harmed no one. I will harm no one, unless you attempt to remove me by force. That will likely cause the death of both Dr. Reid and I, and I cannot recommend you take that course of action.”

“Bullshit he let you do it,” Emily said, and Dean heard the very smallest of wavers in her voice. “He wouldn’t do that to m—us. He wouldn’t hurt us like that. I’d rather bury him than see you twist him, I warn you. Keep it up. Keep talking. See what I do.”

Dean watched in the rear view mirror. Reid—or the goddess within him, because Dean needed to get his head around the fact that King Dork wasn’t in control here—turned his head slowly to stare down Prentiss in a show of steel balls that Dean almost envied, if they weren’t coming from a crazy-ass-murderous-broad.

“Yes,” the goddess said with Reid’s voice, and smiled sadly. It was a small, thin smile, and nothing at all like the way the man normally smiled at Prentiss, and a little part of Dean winced at how much that must be hurting her. “He assures me that you will not hesitate to shoot us both. I commend your dedication to protecting your family, even from internal threats.”

“Stop speaking for him and let him talk if you’re so determined to convince us he’s letting this happen.” Prentiss’s gun wavered again, just for a second, before settling. JJ huffed a breath, shifting on her knees, surely in agony by now. She coughed in the silence that followed and the sound was damp. Dean wasn’t feeling so chipper either, driving for two hours on edge with ribs that were broken for sure.

“She can’t,” JJ said softly, her eyes bruised looking in the uneven light of the car interior. “I… I couldn’t say a word. I know mine was maybe different but… it didn’t feel like I _could_ , even if the goddess who had me had wanted me to. It was like she was filling every part of my mind, with no space left for me.”

“Jennifer is correct,” Reid said, and JJ recoiled. Quickly, he adjusted, “JJ is correct,” and, somehow, that was worse. “I cannot ‘step aside’ for him. But he is here and only moderately distressed. Mostly by your sorrow, Agent Prentiss, as well as concern for the health of J… Jennifer and Dean, anxiety about the state of the agents my sisters damaged so, worry for the safety of Jack Hotchner. Would you like me to continue?” He—she? –paused, swallowing uncomfortably. “I can help you with several of those concerns, if you wish to relieve some of his suffering. I am a healer. You will need to un-cuff me, however.”

“Why don’t you just fucking do it?” Dean muttered, remembering the nice new dent on his beloved car’s paintwork. “You’ve got Reid’s brains, right? Shithead can pick locks…”

JJ coughed again, her cheeks flushed with a mottled red. “Can he?” she asked, curiously. “Really?”

“There was an incident when Dr. Reid discovered himself cuffed and unable to reach the keys,” Reid said, with a tone that _would_ have been eager, had the goddess not given it an almost robotic air. “After that, he persisted in teaching himself the art of lock-picking.”

Dean snorted, still sore about his poor car. “Why do you even let this guy in the field, he’s a disaster. Getting cuffed by your bad guys…”

“It was not a ‘bad guy’,” the goddess said, and they all heard the distinct click of a lock undoing as he brought her hands to his front, fingers spread wide to show he wasn’t threatening them, the cuffs hanging from one wrist. He paused, expression turning inward for a moment, then smiled again with his ears reddening. “He does not wish for me to share the rest of this tale. We are… embarrassed. I have never felt like this before. Interesting.”

_… Oh man, Spencer, you kinky little **weirdo**_ **,** Dean thought, almost proud, and couldn’t hide the shit-eating grin that had slipped onto his face. “Not supposed to use your service cuffs for that,” he suggested, smirking at Reid in the mirror. “Rookie mistake.”

Reid turned that smile, that slightly off smile, onto JJ. “May I?” he asked gently, shaking his wrists. The cuffs clinked. Emily’s gun shifted, her finger tracing the butt near the trigger warily. “That cough is settling into your lungs. Pneumonia is imminent. Allow me to help you as a sign of good faith. It is not entirely charitable on my behalf; Dr. Reid is highly distraught by the declension of your condition.”

Dean thought of maybe warning her away from that course of action, but they were two hours into this drive and the goddess hadn’t done… well, anything really. Not even back at the house when Prentiss had taken him out, pressed her gun to his back, and screamed at him to, _get in the fucking circle, get out of him now, now!_ He’d just placidly submitted to the cuffs, to being shoved into the car once the damage to the book had been noted and… quietly allowed them to continue threatening her. Him. Them.

“Okay,” JJ said, and Emily growled deep in her throat like she was horrified at the mere notion, her free hand twitching towards JJ as she held her arm out to him. “Because… because I need to believe you, goddess. Spence is my friend. Please, don’t hurt him.” It took a second. He reached out, touched her fingers, and there was a surge of _something_ that crackled between them, the radio humming and falling silent. JJ took one breath and then another, and both were clear. “Oh,” she said, eyes widening. “That… worked.”

“Dean?” Reid asked, and before Dean could say anything, touched his elbow. To do so, he had to lean closer to Emily. Dean heard her back thump against the door in her scramble to avoid them touching. And then his ribs just… stopped. No more aching, no more shallow breathing; just easy, deep breaths and no pain.

Goddamn.

Maybe she _was_ legit.

“Emily?” Reid said finally, his smile more at ease now, and reached for her hand.

“ _Agent_ Prentiss, and if you touch me, I’ll shoot you,” Emily said icily. Reid dropped his arm. “You’re not Reid. And I don’t trust you. Fuck. Off.” Silence returned to the car. Dean sighed.

He missed Sam.

 

* * *

 

The cold water barely did anything to shake the slimy uneasiness she could almost see coating her pores, looking into the spotty mirror in the bathroom of the backwoods gas station they’d stopped at to refill. She was shaking noticeably, a greenish sheen to her skin. And she didn’t want to go back to that car. Couldn’t go back to that car. Had to go back.

_We’re saving Jack,_ she thought, closing her eyes tight and willing down the roiling nausea in her gut. _Pull it the fuck together, Prentiss. Jack needs you. Hotch needs you._

“Agent Prentiss?”

Her eyes snapped open, hand already flying to her gun as she whirled and grabbed Reid— _not_ Reid, this bitch would _never_ be him—and slammed him back _hard_ against the wall, twisting his collar until he gasped slightly in her grip, mouth slipping open and eyes widening. She stared into those eyes, saying nothing, hoping her expression was enough to tell the creature inside her friend how much she _despised_ it.

“Say another word and regret it,” she said, and Reid’s Adam’s apple bobbed nervously as he swallowed.

“Please,” he rasped, turning his head to inhale noisily against her grip. “I just… let me speak. Let _us_ speak.”

There was a long beat where Emily didn’t know what to do, lost, so fucking lost and confused and desperate for _any_ kind of release from the nightmare of Reid’s eyes turned black and cold, his face reddening from the tension of his throat.

“Emily,” he said, and it _was_ him in that moment, his eyes shuttering shut and a soft measure of something that was indescribably _Reid_ slipping into his tone. Shocked, she let him go, automatically putting her arm out to brace him as he slumped with relief. It occurred to her how close they were standing, his knee bumping hers, the heavy rise and fall of his chest almost bringing them into contact.

“Why, Spence?” she asked, hating the neediness to her voice, wanting the _anger_ back. She’d been so damn furious with him; at first for letting his guard down, and then for fucking _abandoning_ her when she needed him most to get through this. But now it was gone, right when she needed it, leaving only misery. “Why would you let this happen to you?”

His hand brushed the crook of her elbow, tracing the skin, and she twitched with surprise at the gesture. When she met his eyes, they were hazel again, _thank fuck._ The goddess had clearly finally worked out how to let him out and, god, she hadn’t realized how much she’d been grieving him until now, her heart hammering. “I had to,” he said, biting at his lip. “I know who she is, the goddess inside me. Verpiančioji… she’s the healer, Em. The leader. She _wants_ to help us, but she couldn’t in the vessel she was in… and I knew you’d never let me risk myself like this. I knew you’d… offer yourself instead.”

_Hypocrite,_ she wanted to say, but instead she snorted and rolled her eyes at him, unwilling to let the goddess still lurking behind those hazel eyes hear her misery. “Should have just let me do it,” she said, finally finding her spine and finding the anger that came with it. “Fucking _idiot_.”

He blinked, tilted his head down to look at her as she glared all her fury at him, and then brought his mouth to hers.

_What?_

It… wasn’t expected. Not at all. The kiss wasn’t tentative or shy or nervous. His lips were soft, his touch gentle. There was a confident firmness to it that she responded to physically before her brain kicked into gear, feeling his hand curl around her side, fingers trailing on her hip and drawing her close, his other hand coming up to her cheek. It wasn’t… entirely unpleasant.

But it also wasn’t Reid.

She brought her knee up with a wince and a rough _sorry Reid_ in her thoughts, and slammed it into his crotch. He wheezed, buckling forward onto his knees and looking up at her with wide, shocked, fucking _woeful_ eyes, like he couldn’t believe she’d do that to him. “Ow,” he puffed, bringing his hands to cup in front of his crotch. “Ow ow ow, _ow._ I… misread that situation entirely. My… apologies.”

She stared him down. “What?” she asked coldly. “Can heal everyone else with a touch but not yourself?”

Silence. His hands dropped. His eyes blackened.

_You bitch_ , Emily thought, and her lips burned with his touch. _You manipulative fucking cow._

“I _am_ sorry,” the goddess within him said, standing and stepping away to give her space. “We thought it would soften you towards my presence if I was to conduct myself more like the man you are familiar with. He was coaching me until I… misread his thoughts and acted upon my own initiative, misinterpreting his… emotions towards you.”

Emily blinked. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped, snapping her holster open warningly. “How the fuck do you misread _kiss her_?”

Black eyes met hers. “Because he wanted to,” the goddess said, and Emily was floored. “I did not realize he had not acted upon his feelings to you. Human emotions seem to interfere with the use of logic.”

And there it was.

“Oh, how _could_ you?” Emily breathed, turning away, her head spinning. She wasn’t hugely sure if she was angry at the goddess or at Reid or at herself or just at _everything_.

A gentle cough behind her. “I did not mean to cause you discomfort,” the goddess said, sounding miserable. Sounding miserable with Reid’s voice, and it hurt. “Dr. Reid is… upset as well. If it helps, we are suffering. Not in a way I can heal. Dr. Reid’s knowledge leads me to understand that his brain is responding to this emotional distress by flooding his system with cortisol—”

No. No, that didn’t help. Not in the slightest.

“Shut up,” Emily snapped, shoving it _all_ to the back of her mind, the whole messy fucking lot of it. Put it in the ‘deal with later’ basket. “Stop trying to be him. It’s gross. And give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you in the head right now, now that I know you’ll stoop to manipulating us?”

The goddess lowered his chin, Reid’s hair tumbling in front of his eyes. A move that was so familiar and painful, Emily almost responded by stepping forward and brushing it aside, some stupid reaction she’d never had before and wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with now. “Because if I die, he dies with me,” she said, peering through that curtain of hair at Emily. “He loves you, you know. Considers you, and the rest of your team, his family. Would die not only for you, but for them too: for JJ or for Aaron Hotchner, or even for little Jack. And I would die for my sister… for the singular sister that remains that I may yet save. And once she is saved, we will leave… I promise. You will have your friend back… or whatever he may be to you.”

_What are you to me?_ Emily wondered wildly, staring at him. The familiar lines of his face. The unfamiliar cast to his eyes.

But it didn’t matter what he was. Not yet.

Likely, by the end of this, one or both of them would be a sad picture on the wall of the FBI. She wasn’t optimistic enough to believe that… _this_ … was something in her future.

“Okay,” she said finally, and turned her back on him. “But when this is over… you give him back to me. Or I’ll take him by force.”

 

* * *

 

Some strange atmosphere pervaded the car for the final eight hours of that long drive. Reid… no, the woman controlling him… was silent, hunched into himself with his arms folded around his belly like he was holding all the pain of the world inside. Emily stared moodily out the window. Neither spoke, and neither looked at each other. There was going to be trouble there, JJ knew. She’d seen Emily’s face when Reid had stood, back in Georgia, his eyes as black as pitch. Seen the confusion which had turned to horror and then… grief. Absolute crushing grief. In the madness of the past few days, they’d been clinging to each like never before, and now they didn’t even have that.

Dean was singing along with some rock ballad, having taken advantage of Emily’s withdrawal to crank the music up. JJ didn’t have the heart to turn it down, devastating the only person in the car who still seemed capable of at least attempting to smile. In front of them, the lights of DC winked across the horizon.

As they entered DC, she could only hope they’d gotten there in time…

She gave Dean Jessica’s address tersely, the tension in the vehicle becoming palpable as they wove through the suburban streets, the motor of the Impala throbbing noisily and out of place in the late-night hush. The house, when they reached it, stood silent.

“They may have beaten us,” Reid said, in the wispy kind of voice that the goddess spoke with, and JJ shivered. She still wasn’t okay with having it with them… but when their only option was abandoning their friend, they didn’t really have a choice. “Jennifer, it will have to be you who approaches—”

“She knows how to do her job,” Emily growled, opening the door and vanishing. JJ cursed silently, following, the sound of the door closing echoing horribly around the quiet street. Emily was waiting by the gate, eyes scanning the building and then tracing the street with an expression that would be almost nervous on anyone else.

“Take it easy on him, Em,” JJ coaxed, slipping her fingers into her pocket and fiddling with her powered-down phone. “Whatever the goddess is doing, it’s not Reid’s fault. He’s a pawn right now, same as Hotch. If she’s planning on betraying us…”

“He chose it,” Emily retorted, expression closing off. “Hotch didn’t. Stay within sight. They might still be here.” JJ sighed, walking up the gravelled drive, feeling the eyes watching her path. They _had_ to have beaten them here… there was no other option. They couldn’t lose Jack like this. Lose Hotch. They’d never recover… Raising her hand, she hesitated before loudly knocking three times. Forcefully. It was a ‘police’ knock, the kind that everyone innately knew and feared. The kind JJ had used before, usually right before using the words, _I’m sorry, sir/ma’am, but your sister/brother/child/loved one…_

The overhead light flicked on, the door pulling against the chain. “JJ?” Jessica asked, worry thick in her voice. The sliver of her face visible behind the chain vanished as she opened it properly. “It’s late. What’s happened. Is it Aaron?”

“Where’s Jack?” JJ asked. Jessica was dressed for bed, but there was a glass of wine in her hand. Would she drink if she still had Jack?

“What do you mean?” Jessica asked, and now she peered past JJ, her eyes landing on the Impala parked slightly up the street, interior dark. “Aaron picked him up not even twenty minutes ago.”

 

* * *

 

Jack Hotchner was scared. Huddled on the swing, his eyes flickering from one shadow to the next of the darkened playground, Isska could see him trembling. Something within her tightened uncomfortably at the sight. Isska inched closer. Jack’s eyes darted to her, his small hands gripping the chain tightly, legs too short to reach the bark-chips below. “Want me to push you?” she offered uncertainly, and Jack shook his head.

“I want my aunt,” he said, eyes glistening in the thin illumination from the moon, and Isska winced. They… couldn’t do this. This felt wrong. This felt so, so wrong.

“Gad—Aaron,” Isska called, turning her back on the boy and walking towards the form of her sister standing on the outskirts of the park, face petulant. She wasn’t happy. Jack had initially leapt into her arms, rambling about his day. But something had clued the boy in that his daddy wasn’t right… he’d pulled away.

Gaddy hadn’t taken it well.

“We can’t hurt him,” Isska hissed, glancing back over her shoulder at the boy nervously. “Not… not even for revenge.”

“Can’t we?” Gaddy said coolly. “I think he’s been cosseted for far too long. Maybe he wouldn’t have such an attitude if Daddy was a little rougher. Get him. Bring him here. The rest of the team have probably followed us… we’ll have a surprise ready for them when they arrive.”

“Dad?” They both turned, looking down at the shivering form of the boy. He shrunk back, his eyes on Isska. “I want to go home. Please?” There were tears on his cheeks.

“Stop that,” Gaddy snapped, stepping forward. The boy didn’t flinch back. He didn’t fear his father… yet. “Stop crying, stop being fucking pathetic!” Jack’s eyes widened. Now he stepped back. Isska winced again. “I can’t believe _this_ is my son. We should have gone for the other one, Jareau’s brat. Are you with me, Isska? Or are you leaving me as well?”

Isska wavered.

Aaron Hotchner’s cell rang. Isska tugged it out, glancing at it disinterestedly before raising an eyebrow as she registered the name on the display. “Well,” she said softly, “Jareau’s number. What do you think?”

“Answer it,” Isska suggested. “Maybe…” Maybe Sergė was okay. Maybe she was on her way. Maybe Verpi was coming… maybe Isska wasn’t alone after all.

Gaddy did, flicking the speaker on. “JJ,” she greeted her, mouth curling into a catlike grin. Jack whimpered and stepped back again. Isska grabbed his shoulder, tugging him against her side and ignoring him wriggling to get away. “How can I help you?”

There was a long puff of air, but it wasn’t JJ’s voice that spoke. It was muffled, hurried, and Isska didn’t recognise it. She _did_ , however, recognise who was speaking behind the words. “Gadintoja,” said Verpi, with a man’s throaty voice, and Gaddy’s face split into a wide and toothy smile, a little unhinged, and Jack began to cry. “Where are you? I have… changed my mind. I am not the kind to work alone. I need my sisters.”

“Why should we believe you?” Gaddy asked, sniffing. “Despite the interesting little note of you having possessed, Spencer Reid— _is_ that him? Where did you find _that_ little rat?”

Verpi hummed. “The same place I found Emily Prentiss,” she said finally. “They trust me. Or rather, they trust Spencer Reid. They are blind to danger when it walks with his face. Are you still intent upon revenge?”

“What are you offering, sister?” Gaddy met Isska’s gaze. Isska stayed silent, shaking Jack’s shoulder to shut him up when his sobs became too audible.

“I have JJ as well. They follow me, suspecting nothing. Aaron Hotchner is of little use to you now as a vessel, without his connections… and what greater revenge is there than to have him know that he is the destruction of _everything_? The murder of Spencer Reid, the framing of Emily Prentiss, the disappearance of Jennifer Jareau… and the death of his son. It’ll be the death penalty for sure, and everyone will know his name.”

Gaddy laughed and laughed and laughed and Isska couldn’t help but be drawn into that glee a little, that reckless abandon, despite the small niggling thought that teased her, the whisper of something else… the memory of the scent of smoke.

“Where are you? We’ll bring the boy to you.”

 

* * *

 

Verpiančioji hung the phone up, feeling Reid tensing in her mind, probing her intentions. Mistrusting her. _Too late to change your mind now,_ she reminded him. Silence. In the car nearby, she could hear them bickering. Arguing about their next move. None of them knowing that she’d just made the next move for them, the one that would bring this game to a close. The ‘checkmate’ as Dr. Reid would call it.

_If you betray them,_ Dr. Reid said, his voice a thin, fading whisper, _I’ll spend the rest of my life hunting you._

_If I betray them,_ she said, turning back to the car, _your life will be far too short to do anything of the kind._

He was going to have to trust her. It was too late for him to do anything else.


	10. Ex. 11:1-12:36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _This is what the LORD says: "About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn in Egypt will **die** , from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again."_
> 
> _—_ _Exodus 11:4–6_

As Verpiančioji tightened the ropes, she noted how terribly fragile the woman’s wrists felt under them. Humans were so frighteningly breakable. So… fleeting. JJ turned her head, blue eyes wide over the black gag around her mouth. They were in the middle of an empty warehouse, abandoned for the night with minimal, easily dealt with security, and little chance of interruptions. Swallowing her misgivings, Verpiančioji tugged the knot closed and stood, studying it critically. It looked correct, according to Dr. Reid’s substantial knowledge of knots. It would do the job required of it.

_The rug looks out of place,_ Dr. Reid pointed out, concerned, and they both looked down at the rug under JJ’s folded legs. Between her knees, hidden once Agent Prentiss took her place at her back, her gun was a dark, blocky suggestion. _They’ll notice it…_

_Gadintoja is not that clever,_ Verpiančioji assured him. _And Išskalbėja will not suspect betrayal from me._

Under the rug, the rune lay. Not in blood, but Verpiančioji was sure the spray paint Dean had acquired would do the job adequately. Dievas Senelis was aware of their purpose. He would be listening.

“Nod if you can escape the knot in a hurry,” Verpiančioji asked JJ, who tensed her wrists and then nodded, eyes tracking their progress as they paced critically around her. It would have to do. “Very well. Agent Prentiss now.”

_Over there,_ Reid said, and Verpiančioji turned her head to find Prentiss peering out the heavy warehouse door, watching for Dean. He was placing the final workings on the windows and other doors, to try and contain the sisters in some small way. They wouldn’t hold for long… but with Verpiančioji’s help, they might hold long enough. _She’s upset…_

_How can you tell?_ Verpiančioji asked curiously, pacing up quietly behind the woman. _She looks merely focused to me._

_Her posture. Her shoulders. She’s been biting her nails. You upset her…_ His voice was still simmering, still bitter with traces of the horrified fury he’d shown when she’d miss-stepped and kissed the other agent earlier that day. As she remembered it, their lips tingled, still warm with the memory of her mouth. Despite his anger, there was some pleasure in the physicality of the act. _You shouldn’t have done that. It was… stupid._

His feelings were a muddle that made her head ache. It was hard to understand why he denied them so fiercely, why he had responded so violently to even the merest hint of rejection. After all, it was not _him_ Agent Prentiss had rejected. It was Verpiančioji who’d disgusted her. Human lives seemed terribly complicated.

_It was not stupid, just misguided_ , she responded, coughing to alert Agent Prentiss to their presence. The woman’s eyes flickered to them, and back outside. Still angry. So much anger in these humans. _She responded. If you weren’t being foolish, you would know this. After all, it is your understanding of the physiological response to physical contact that tells us this. Not mine._

“We have to tie you up now,” she said out loud, ignoring Dr. Reid’s spluttering.

Emily snorted, rolling her eyes and turning to face them, mouth downcast. “Even after hearing about your little adventure with your cuffs, that’s still bizarre to hear from you,” she teased without any of the usual warmth that Dr. Reid’s memories told her should be there. Within her, Verpiančioji felt Dr. Reid wither miserably. The amusement vanished from Agent Prentiss abruptly as some of that sadness leaked through onto their face, and she grabbed their hand. Verpiančioji jolted with surprise at the sudden touch, sure that Agent Prentiss would continue to ignore them until such a time as Verpiančioji was removed from within her friend. “You know, if your sisters work out you’re working with us, they’ll kill you. You might be the oldest, but I’ve seen what the one in Hotch can do.”

Verpiančioji nodded. “It is likely discovery would mean my death,” she admitted. “But there is little we can do about that except to work quickly.” Their hand was warm, the skin where they touched hypersensitive.

Dark eyes studied them tiredly. “You’ll do what you can to keep him safe, right?” she said, hand twitching around their fingers. “No matter what happens?”

_She comes first,_ Dr. Reid cut in. _No matter what, they come first. Promise me._

“Promise me?” Agent Prentiss was saying, and Verpiančioji could almost laugh at how alike they were, if it wasn’t so terribly sad that they had found themselves in a situation where it felt necessary to beg for each other’s lives. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Come here.”

“What are you doing?” both Verpiančioji and Dr. Reid said at the same time, and Verpiančioji was startled to realize that she had felt Dr. Reid shape the words in her mouth, some semblance of control she hadn’t expected him to obtain.

“This isn’t for you,” snapped Prentiss, and Verpiančioji winced and almost twitched her hand down to protect themselves. Then there was a hand cupping their chin, a mouth on theirs, and Verpiančioji was speechless at the _emotion_ it wrought. Dr. Reid was _giddy._ Confused, tentative, excited, scared; so many flavours of human emotions, she felt almost drunk on them. The kiss lingered. Their hearts hammered.

And then it was over. It had taken only seconds, but everything felt… different, and Verpiančioji wasn’t sure she was entirely in control anymore.

“Promise me you won’t be stupid,” Emily said, her mouth still brushing his, and he brought his lips to hers one last time just to see if he was really allowed, tasting the shape of them, breathless and silly and wild with hope.

“I’m never stupid,” he said, and slipped back into his mind, allowing Verpiančioji control once more.

_No matter what, she comes first,_ he vowed one final time, and Verpiančioji agreed silently.

She owed him that much.

 

* * *

 

Isska was nervous. Stupid bitch. There was nothing to worry about; clearly Verpi had finally come to her senses and worked out that their future lay with Gaddy in the lead. Gaddy rolled her eyes as Isska muttered, “Just going to check things out,” and slunk away, leaving Gaddy to enter the warehouse with the kid’s sweaty palm gripped tightly in her hand, stumbling over his own inadequate legs trying to keep up with her.

Human children were _useless._

_How can you stand this?_ Gaddy thought irritably, yanking the boy’s arm and barely biting back a smile when it unbalanced him and sent him sprawling to the ground. _I think I’m doing you a favour._

Inside her, there was a raging _hellfire_ of fury, and it was impressive because no vessel in her memory had ever fought her this hard or this feverishly. Aaron Hotchner was desperate to stop her doing what she planned, and she just kept knocking him back easily, all the time gleefully imagining just _what_ she was going to do to his precious baby boy using his hands.

“Move,” she snapped, the amusement with the boy’s clumsiness fading as, instead of getting back up, he hugged his knees to his chest and began to whine with fear. Great, gasping breaths that whistled, his face red and hot and grossly sticky as he leaked from every facial orifice. Disgusting. “Move!”

“No, no,” he mewled, staggering up despite his fear. She noted with delight the glazed expression to his eyes. She loved when her prey hit this point, half out of their minds with fear. “Daddy, no. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry, please don’t be mad. I’m good. I’ll be good.” He was babbling, panicking, and he stunk of piss.

Brat.

_I’m going to rip you apart,_ screamed her vessel, tearing at her with ineffectual rage. She ignored the pain he wrought. _You’ll die for this! Don’t touch him! Jack!_

“I’m good,” gasped Jack, and she grabbed him roughly around the stomach and carried him into the warehouse, out of patience.

Inside, Verpi looked up. She was wearing the skinny agent Gaddy had shot, his eyes black and expressionless. Inside her, despite his fury, her vessel took a moment to be horrified by the sight. _At least he’s alive,_ Gaddy pointed out cruelly, smiling, and her vessel didn’t respond.

At Verpi’s feet, Prentiss stared at them, bound and gagged. She looked _pretty_ gagged. She’d look prettier bleeding and begging for her life, for the boy’s life; prettier still when both those requests were denied. Behind her, Gaddy could see blonde hair and a bowed head. Sergė’s vessel. Another who would soon decorate the warehouse floor.

“So, you came crawling back,” Gaddy jeered, and Verpi sniffed and set her chin in a haughty line. “Knew you would. Knew you couldn’t do it without us. What changed your mind?”

“We’re family,” Verpi said softly, the haughtiness fading and leaving her just looking resigned. “Family stick together, Gadintoja. Family… protect each other.” Oddly, she looked at Prentiss as she said that, and her gaze lingered.

Wrinkling her nose, Gaddy pulled a disgusted face. “How trite,” she said. “Fine. Prove that you’re with me then, sister. Prove that this isn’t some flight of sentimental whimsy… if you’re with me, I don’t want any fuck-assing around.”

“What would you have me do?” Verpi asked, her vessel’s eyes narrowed warily. Not fully committed then. Not yet.

_You’re very fond of Spencer Reid, aren’t you?_ she asked her vessel. He snarled in reply, seething. _Hmm. Will that fondness remain if he harms your child? He’s a tall man… strong, no doubt. Not as strong as you, but certainly strong enough for wee little Jackie boy._

_No!_

“Here.” Gaddy shoved the boy at Verpi, who reached a hand out automatically to stop him from falling and dropped to her knees as Jack sobbed with something that was almost relief, turning his stumble into a controlled leap into Verpi’s grasp. Following, Gaddy loomed over them both. “Hurt him.”

Verpi stiffened. In her arms, Jack froze too, turning huge brown eyes on Gaddy. “Daddy?” he whispered, voice high and breathy, lips almost blue with shock and cold.

_No, no, no, he won’t do it. He…_

_You shot him. Are you so sure?_

“Hurt… him?” Verpi repeated, and Jack shrunk against her chest, almost vanishing into the long cradle of Verpi’s vessel’s lanky arms. She spread a hand over the boy’s back, protectively; a wide, bony hand that seemed obscenely large in comparison to the little boy it covered.

“Did I fucking _stutter?_ ” Gaddy snapped, her temper flaring. She reached down, dragging the boy back out of Verpi’s loose grip by the collar of his dinosaur pyjamas, ignoring the way the boy squeaked and reached for her. “It’s not fucking hard, he’s _six_. _Do it._ ”

Jack began to shriek, a high-pitched wail that _grated_. On the floor, Gaddy saw Prentiss begin to struggle against her bindings, JJ already twisting herself painfully around to stare at them.

“Shut up,” Gaddy roared, and the boy screamed louder. “Verpi, I said do it! Fucking do it, you useless slut!” The boy kept _fucking screaming._ Verpi did nothing. Gaddy whirled on him. “Listen to your father!” she snarled, and slapped him.

Silence. Jack blinked, on his ass with his cheek a bright red, the handprint already visible. It would bruise splendidly.

Her vessel _roared_ and lurched and Gaddy staggered with a gasp, not expecting the _power_ he suddenly coursed with. It wasn’t even words he was slamming her with anymore, just a wild, primitive frenzy that left her reeling, left her falling to her knees on the hard floor with her head in her hands as she tried to fight him off.

_Jack!_

Something struck her on the chin, sending her sprawling. Blinking, she looked up, right as someone grabbed her arm and heaved her sideways, half dragging her towards the rug where Prentiss was shaking off her restraints, ripping her gag off, a gun in her hand.

Betrayal.

Gaddy snarled and _shoved,_ sending JJ flying. The woman managed to land almost neatly, leaping back up with only the slightest wince. Her dark power just within reach, Gaddy threw both the FBI bitches back again, making sure that Prentiss’s head smacked the ground nice and hard before whirling on her faithless sister. Verpi took one look at her expression and grabbed Jack, bolting past her with the boy in her arms.

“Traitorous cunt!” shrieked Gaddy, and flung herself after her sister, bringing all three of them down in a jumble on the dusty, foul-smelling rug. She’d show her. She’d burn the fucking brat while he writhed in her sister’s arms, _see if she didn’t!_ Reaching for the kid, power bubbling and oozing from her fingertips, her hand brushed his flailing ankle as he tried to escape. He screamed.

Her touch was death, and even children knew it.

Verpi struck her. Once on the jaw, and again, this time to the nose. Gaddy tasted blood, felt cartilage shift.

_Kill me, Reid!_ her vessel howled within her. _Protect my son!_

Gaddy reached for the kid again. He was loose but not running, blank-eyed with fear, like a rabbit who knew the fox was inescapable. Verpi grabbed her wrist, gasping as the Gaddy’s power spilled over into her instead; the rot and festering pain that Gaddy brought boiling down her hand, her arm, blackening the skin and leaving pustules that bubbled. “Let me go,” Gaddy hissed, trying to shake that iron-clad grip off, feeling Verpi’s own power trying to heal what she was destroying. She slapped her sister’s face, leaving lines of sickness that decayed and healed in seconds as Verpi fought her. “I’m stronger than you! You’ll die!”

“You’ll burn yourself out,” Verpi said calmly, despite the fact that she _was_ losing, because her lungs were rotting now, her heart choking, and not even she could fix a vessel that was nothing but meat not even fit for dogs. “To kill me, you’ll die with me. I think a fitting end for us, sister. I released you upon this world… it is my duty to remove you from it.”

“Reid!” someone distantly was screaming. Gaddy’s vision blurred. Through the haze, she saw someone grab Jack, carrying him away. Someone blonde. “Say it, Spencer! Fucking say it you bastard! Call him!” Verpi blinked, her reactions slow and uneven. Sluggish. Gaddy would take advantage of that but her own mind was splintered, her power being sucked into an endless pit of healing that took and took and took and left her hollow, empty, _dying…_

Her sister blinked again. Began to speak, slow and awkward. Clumsy. Familiar words. She stopped. Her voice changed, squeaked, became _human_. “Don’t! Don’t touch me—she can hurt you through me!”

Gaddy looked up, slowly, so slowly, and found Prentiss with one foot on the rug, her eyes huge and locked on Verpi. On the magic that blackened her skin, her vessel being torn apart faster than she could heal it.

“Spence?” she said, her voice frightened, and reached for him. Verpi just flinched away, her grip tightening. She began to chant again and Gaddy was fascinated.

But not fascinated enough to stop destroying her.

 

* * *

 

Gaddy screamed.

Isska turned and ran towards the warehouse where her sister was, feet thudding heavily on the asphalt. The doorway loomed ahead as her heart hammered; what had gone wrong? Were the hunters within?

_Not both my sisters!_ she thought wildly, and her vessel shifted uncomfortably. _No no no…_

_Your sisters are cruel,_ he sent tiredly. _Why do you follow them?_

Whatever answer she had planned, it vanished in a heartbeat from her mind as she approached the door and a man stepped out of it. A man she _knew_ so innately despite never speaking to him. “Dean,” she said, skidding to a halt. “Get out of my way.”

_Don’t hurt him!_ her vessel demanded, anxiety thundering through them both. _Don’t. Come on, you know him. He’s my brother._

It was… hard to dislike Sam.

“No can do, crazy lady,” Dean replied, hefting his weapon in his hands threateningly. She wasn’t worried… he wouldn’t use it against his brother. They _loved_ far too much.

_Just like you and your sisters,_ Sam reminded her.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” she snarled, and raised her hand. His eyes tracked her hand, brow furrowed and face coldly furious. Hating her. That was fine. She didn’t require the affection of a worthless human—

_That’s Gaddy talking, not you,_ Sam said. He was so annoyingly moralistic, _gah_. _You don’t believe that. Why are you still cleaning up her messes?_

In reply, Isska used her power to grab Dean by the throat and hurl him back against the door with a grunt. “I said _get out of my way_ ,” she spat, striding towards him and closing her fist to tighten her grip, just to show Sam who was in control here. “I won’t have you stand between you and my family!”

“Like you are between me and mine?” Dean wheezed, one hand at his throat and the other bracing against the door. The Colt lie at his feet where he’d dropped it. “Give me back my brother. Listen—I’ve just spent the last day with a legit freaking genius rambling about you in my ear. I know who you are, and I know _what_ you are. And I know you’re not evil.”

Isska stared at him. Loosened her grip slightly.

_Oh sure, you listen to someone else when they teach you something, but when I try to do it…_ Sam was grumbling, but Isska shushed him.

“You know who I am?” Isska asked, and swallowed hard. Oh, she _knew_ who she was. Sort of. A… little. But there was so much she knew was lost to her.

“Išskalbėja,” Dean said, mangling the pronunciation but it was her name. She rolled her eyes.

“I know my name, you idiot—”

“The laundress,” he continued. Sam was silent, listening intently. “The goddess of light. She who cleanses evil—that’s who you are. You fix what your crazier sisters fuck up. You keep them in check. The seven of you are a balance, and that balance is way out of whack. Come on, I know all this shit, and my… I know a dude who knows even more. You wanna know who your patron is? He knows that. You just gotta help us stop what your sister is trying to do. If you do this—if you murder an innocent kid—you’ll never find who you are.”

_He’s not lying,_ Sam added, and she knew he was right. _I can always tell when he’s lying._

“Your other sisters aren’t dead,” Dean said, finally, and she let him go with a _thump_. “Dievas Senelis—he has them. He’s Verpi’s patron god. She’s helping us, to help you, because you’re her sister… but you gotta let me have my brother back, okay?”

Gaddy screamed again and Isska ran, jumping over Dean and hurtling into the warehouse. Maybe he was right, maybe, but Gaddy was here right now, in trouble, and it was up to Isska to look after her. From anything that threaten—

_Verpi?_ she thought, stunned, finding Gaddy pinning Verpi to a rug, her face twisted furiously and the dark, deathly power she wielded callously twining through their oldest sister and warping the vessel she was within. Isska could see it. Could see the tendrils of darkness oozing through the vessel’s thin body and squeezing his organs. It reached slowly and inexorably towards his head, his brain, even as Verpi’s bright power struggled to push it back, his mouth moving but the words he was speaking inaudible from this distance.

“Gaddy, stop!” she called, and ran forward. “What are you _doing?_ ”

Verpi moaned once, her eyes shuttering and glazing. She was losing, but Gaddy was too. Her vessel was greying as Isska watched, the colour leaching from his skin as she drained every last reserve. Just off the rug, Prentiss stood with her gun steady in her hands and eyes locked on Verpi. There was fear on her face, fear of loss. She raised the gun, at Gaddy. At the vessel Gaddy was inhabiting.

“She betrayed us!” Gaddy screeched, and her grip on Verpi tightened, fingers sinking into her skin hard enough to draw blood. “She’s working with them!”

“You’re going to kill your vessel!” Isska shouted, moving forwards. The gun moved to aim at her chest. Behind her, Dean called something that could have been _don’t_ , but Isska was focused on her sisters. “We don’t hurt each other! This isn’t what we do—let her go now!”

Verpi choked and fell silent, eyes rolling until only the whites showed and body falling limp. Whatever she’d been saying, silenced. There was a long beat of horror.

Then the vessel stiffened, arched.

Seized.

“Spencer!” Prentiss leapt forward with a scream, and Gaddy staggered up, raised her hand, threw the agent down. “Get off me!”

“Verpi will… take… her…” Gaddy wheezed, chest heaving. “She won’t… die with… the human. She’s not… stupid.”

Isska stared at Verpi. Her chest was still moving, still breathing, even as his body shuddered and stopped. But she wasn’t abandoning the vessel. She was… still trying to heal it. Despite her magic being drained almost beyond redemption, she was still trying to save him. It was so… her. And Isska raised her magic. The anger and the hate she’d been cultivating, that she’d been allowing to rule her, faltered.

_What do I do?_ she asked no one in particular, anyone who was listening, as she stepped onto the rug and looked down at her sisters. _I… I don’t know what to do._

_Help Verpi!_ Sam demanded.

“Help me!” Gaddy howled furiously, shaking Verpi’s prone body, his head lolling grossly on his neck. “Help me drag her out before the vessel dies! She doesn’t get to escape this!”

_She’s not trying to save your sister,_ Sam continued. _She just wants revenge. She wants Verpi to suffer. And when she has, she’ll kill Jack. And JJ and Emily and their families and when will it end? It won’t… she’ll never stop. She just wants death and without Verpi, there’s no balance._

Prentiss kicked out, her foot impacting against Gaddy’s wrist, and Isska heard bone break. Dragging herself, Prentiss painstakingly reached out for Verpi. No… not for Verpi. Fingers twined around the prone hand of Verpi’s vessel. Clinging on grimly.

Humans _loved_ so much.

“I won’t help you,” Isska said, and turned her power on Gaddy, throwing her back from her sister and the woman who was trying to hold Verpi’s vessel to this world with sheer willpower. “I… I won’t turn against my family.”

_Who am I, Išskalbėja?_ whispered a voice, and the rune around them began to glow. _Name me._

_I don’t know!_ Isska thought, looking around wildly.

“Dievas?” shouted Prentiss, scrambling up to her knees and hunching over Verpi protectively. “Help us!”

But it wasn’t Dievas Senelis… Isska remembered him now. He was there too. Distantly. Watching. Not speaking. This… this voice was for Isska alone.

Behind them, Gaddy was standing, her form wavering as she pulled every last remnant of her power into herself, readying herself to set them aflame. Burn them.

Burn…

“Gabija!” Isska called, and felt a warm-hot pressure against her legs, twining around them. “Protect them!”

_We protect families, Išskalbėja,_ continued the voice, and the cat became a flame; became a woman clothed in burning red. She towered over them, an inferno, and Prentiss cried out as their skin warmed almost beyond their ability to bear. _You forgot for so long, daughter. You have hurt this family. I cannot allow this to go unpunished. If I stop her, you will be caught in that._

_Have mercy, Gabija,_ Dievas said, appearing at her side, half her size and withered. _She repents._

_No,_ Isska said, and looked down. Gaddy was frozen with shock, staring, and beside her Prentiss had Verpi’s vessel pulled into her lap, arms sheltering him from the heat and her dark hair falling loose over his face. _She’s right. Fix this. Please._

And Gabija did.

Through the fire and the cleansing touch of flame, she seared them from the world, and all they knew was pain.

 

* * *

 

The warehouse burned without burning. Dean felt himself crying out with the pain of it, the world around him wavering and warping with the heat, and he couldn’t see Sam, couldn’t see the goddesses, couldn’t see a goddamn fucking _thing_ through this supernatural inferno. On his knees with no memory of falling, he pushed himself up and crawled deeper into that heat, screaming for Sam.

“Sam!”

There was no answer. Through the twisted air around him, he saw a blurry form on the floor. Touched it. Felt rough denim, a soft shirt, the familiar shape of his brother’s face. He huddled closer, finding his head and curling around it, some pathetic attempt at stopping the heat from suffocating them. He couldn’t breathe. None of them could. Distantly, he blinked agonisingly dry eyes and saw the dim form of Emily crumpled overtop of Reid, neither moving. He couldn’t see the other goddess. Couldn’t see further than the side of the rug.

_Hope JJ got the kid out,_ he thought, and felt a searing, burning, scorching hand reach into his chest and wrap around his heart. He screamed.

_The pain is temporary,_ said a voice that crackled and popped like a wildfire. _Išskalbėja, now. This one too._

The next touch was cooler.

_I cleanse the evil you have suffered,_ said a voice, a young woman, and the touches receded.

He fell into black, Sam underneath him.

And woke.

Lungs screaming, the world silent around him. Above him, the vaulted roof of the warehouse blurred.

He turned his head, coughing.

“Dean?” said someone, from so fucking far away Dean almost snapped at them to move closer, but his throat wasn’t working. “What have you done to them?”

Wait.

He knew this voice.

_Cas… help._

_We will help him soon, little angel man. Be patient. Others require us more. Verpiančioji, this one wanes. Assist me._

A hand on his forehead, blue eyes watching him, and Dean closed his eyes.

Wait.

_Sam? Where is Sam?_

 

* * *

 

Emily opened her eyes, and Reid was alive. Letting her head roll to look at him, she found that someone had laid them side by side, their shoulders touching and hands still tangled together. And his chest was moving steadily, his eyes closed, his skin clean and unmarked. There was no sign of the rotting, festering wounds the monster had opened on his arms and face, no purple-tinged lips, no wheezing final breaths.

The memory of them haunted her though.

_How?_ she thought distantly, and let go of his hand to trail her fingers across his face wonderingly.

It took every iota of strength she possessed, but she sat up, pushing through an almost inhuman sleepiness that tried to throw her back down. But Emily Prentiss didn’t give up just because she’d rather nap.

On her other side, another man lay just as still and broken. Hotch.

A woman walked towards them. A child in her arms. Emily snarled, fighting against an invisible hand that pressed against her chest and tried to lower her back to the ground.

“Let him go,” Emily said, eyes locked on the unconscious form of Jack Hotchner cradled in the woman’s grasp. “Where is JJ?”

_Dievas Senelis helps her. If she needs to forget these events to be at peace, he and Išskalbėja ensure it. They will also assist your other team members. I bring the boy to his father so they can be reunited. Today will not linger in his mind._

And she crouched, tucking the limp form of Jack into his father’s arms.

“He’s… himself?” Emily struggled to say, her eyes heavy and words slurring. “Wait, no, no, don’t make me forget. I don’t… get the fuck out of my head…”

_Why do you fight me so fiercely? Is it so difficult to accept something kind?_

“I… don’t… trust…” She was falling back, awkward, something warm and firm under her shoulder, her head. She blinked once.

Again.

Once more.

“I don’t want to forget it all…” she finished, thinking of what had been offered to her, and opened her eyes to find the shadows had shifted and Reid was looking at her. “Don’t want to forget this.”

He smiled, crookedly, and his arm was around her, his hand splayed protectively across her belly.

“We won’t,” he murmured, and tugged her close.

This time, she didn’t fight the sleep when it beckoned.

 

* * *

 

Sam stared down at the list Dean had written him of what he called ‘sure it’s nutritionally sound, Sam, there’s like, all two food groups on there.’ The two food groups apparently being ‘meat’ and ‘carbs’ and he was so going to die of a heart attack at thirty, there was no doubt.

“Dean, oi,” he said, walking back towards the car and scowling. “Seriously with the shopping?” He paused.

Dean wasn’t alone.

The man with him turned to look at Sam, and his face was… familiar. Annoyingly familiar, and Sam ran frantically through his mind trying to remember from _where_ he’d seen him.

“Hey, Sammy, this is Agent Pain-in-my-ass,” Dean said, and Sam froze. _A fed?_ The agent, a skinny guy wearing a sweater vest, of all things, smiled oddly at the nickname. “Just having a friendly chat. He’s helping answer my questions, like can I have her number?”

“Is there something we can help you with, Agent?” Sam asked suspiciously.

“Nothing of importance and absolutely not,” the man said, nodding at Sam. “Thank you for your assistance, Dean. Ah… really. You really helped out.”

“You gonna keep up your end of the bargain?” Dean demanded. “I mean, come on, I deserve a reward at least. A photo? You can even be in it, if you’re not touching her.”

Sam scoffed. “Reward for what?” he asked, scowling at Dean. _What have you done, idiot?_ he thought fondly, and Dean grinned. Playing innocent. “The most helpful Dean gets is knocking over hot chicks’ drinks so he can buy them another.”

The agent shrugged non-committedly. “No big deal,” he murmured, and turned away. “We’ll do what we can on our end, but your name is known now. I recommend leaving DC.”

“Aw, but does that mean we don’t get to go out for tequila and taco night?” Dean whined, and the fed sighed as he walked away.

“Goodbye, Dean.”

Dean smiled oddly. “Cya, dork,” he murmured, and turned back to Sam. “So, what are you getting your panties in a twist about? Hey, where’s my pie?”

 

* * *

 

Morgan and JJ were blissfully oblivious about what had happened. Both of them thought the case had just gone a little haywire. The going story was that Prentiss had gone undercover trying to flush out the notorious ‘Dean Winchester’, but the ploy had failed. Whatever Senelis and Isska had done, it was effective. Few people questioned them.

Rossi was… seemingly ignorant, but Hotch didn’t trust that one whit. He’d found a long time ago that it was always best to assume that Rossi knew way more than what he let on.

Reid wasn’t talking about it, but Hotch had reached over to him to hand him a file on their first day back from suspension while their conduct was investigated and cleared, and the man had flinched away from him reflexively. There were wounds there that were going to take a long time to heal. Hotch couldn’t help but stare at his shoulder whenever he walked away from him, as though picturing what it would have looked like when his bullet had ripped through.

Prentiss… Hotch really wasn’t sure. There was a strange atmosphere in the bullpen these days, a kind of waiting tension between his team members that he was sure hadn’t been there before. Reid and Prentiss avoided each other’s gazes, sat away from each other on the jet, and directed any queries they had about their work to the other members of their team.

“There’s something going on with those two,” JJ said one day, eyes narrowed. “Did something happen while they were undercover together?”

Hotch merely hummed and changed the subject.

He’d spent his suspension with his son. Anything Jack wanted to do, they did it, and Jack was giddy with the power he wielded. He didn’t remember a thing, and Hotch couldn’t forget. Couldn’t forget the fear in his eyes aimed at Hotch, the red bruising shape of a hand on his cheek. Looking at Hotch the way Hotch used to look at his own father.

And Hotch refused to forget, because remembering it all was his repentance.

 

* * *

 

“You know what I like about you, Prentiss?” Rossi demanded, throwing himself into the seat next to her. She jumped, coffee sloshing from her mug into her lap and her eyes snapping away from the form of Reid hunched over a report through the window and back to Rossi. “You don’t fuck around. Usually.”

“Is this a pep-talk?” Emily asked, taking the napkin he offered and daubing at her pants. Rossi watched her carefully. Outside in the bullpen, Reid stood and wandered over to Morgan’s desk, his mouth moving at a mile-a-minute as he tried to explain something complicated and probably really boring to the other man. Emily watched him too with her expression blank, but her eyes gave it away. “What have I done now?”

“Fucked around,” Rossi said, and grinned when she shot him a weirded-out look. “Or are in the process of doing so. Come on, Prentiss. The kinda work we’re in, you know there’s no guarantees of anything. You know that more than most… stop being so worried about yesterday, you don’t make any moves for tomorrow.”

He stood. Emily was still staring at him, as though she was trying to gauge how much he knew. The news blared on the TV behind her, a mugshot popping up with _Information wanted on the whereabouts of Dean Winchester. Wanted for:_

Emily flicked her eyes to that without saying anything, and Rossi smirked. “It’s always the handsome ones who get all stabby, isn’t it?” he said, and Emily shrugged. Outside, footsteps thudded towards them.

“Not really my type,” she said, and turned right as Reid poked his head through the door.

“I’m heading out for lunch,” he said, smiling crookedly, eyes skimming the news report. “You guys want to come along?”

“Not me,” Rossi said, flopping into the couch Prentiss had vacated with the speed of a startled cat at the offer. “But Prentiss is _super_ keen. You kids have fun now. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The door swung shut behind them, but didn’t quite cut off Reid’s wary, “He does know that that doesn’t actually rule anything out, right?”

Ah, to be young again.

 

* * *

 

“Checkmate,” Emily said, and took his king. Reid frowned at the board.

“How come you keep beating me?” he asked, and she smiled. It was a soft smile, and he felt a little hot and silly at the sight of it, feeling his own mouth respond automatically.

“I want to win,” she said. Her foot bumped his under the table. Around them, the park was alive with families, the sun warming their shoulders. “I’m very good at getting what I want.”

Reid looked around. Everything looked… so normal. Like there was nothing illogical or unknown lurking under the surface. A perfect illusion. “It’s not over, is it?” he asked suddenly, changing the subject, and she began to reset the board after checking her watch. “I mean… how can it be now we know what we know?”

“We’ll work it out, Spence,” she responded, and looked past him. Smiled at someone over his shoulder. “Together. Hello, you. Long-time no see.”

“Hello, Agent Prentiss. Dr. Agent Reid. May I join you?” Cas slid onto the seat opposite, allowing Emily to slip around and join Reid on his side, sidling across until their sides were pressed together. Reid let his hand fall onto her thigh, hers resting on top. The gentlest point of contact. “Where were we?”

“Three wins to you,” Reid said, and moved his pawn. “Eight to me. I thought you said you were good at strategy.”

“Allow me to redeem myself,” Cas said, and made his move.

Things were different, now.

But not all bad.

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
